


The Assembly

by trashabellanar



Category: Critical Role (Web Series)
Genre: Blood, Canon-Typical Violence, Cerberus Assembly, Explicit Sexual Content, Flashbacks, M/M, Memory Alteration, Memory Loss, Other Additional Tags to Be Added, Past Abuse, Pole Dancing, Self-Harm, Sex Before Feelings, Slow Burn, Soltryce Academy, alternating pov, caleb is an assembly arcanist, i know that's vague but there's a lot of it b/c molly's abilities, idk how to clearly and efficiently tag that, molly is still w the circus except theyre more like a burlesque show, probably a little less than canon tbh, ~~or so they tell themselves~~
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-08-18
Updated: 2018-10-02
Packaged: 2019-06-28 23:12:58
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 11
Words: 38,917
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15717051
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/trashabellanar/pseuds/trashabellanar
Summary: Two years after waking up in his own grave, Mollymauk Tealeaf just wants to let the past go and live a carefree life in the bustling city of Rexxentrum, dancing or reading tarots for pocket change each night. But when he starts manifesting strange abilities, he realizes he can't run forever. Enter Caleb Widogast, a gifted and ambitious Arcanist from the Cerberus Assembly who's willing to risk everything to uncover the secrets of Molly's abilities.But as the two work together to solve the mystery, they both begin to realize that neither of their pasts are what they seem.





	1. The Soirée

**Author's Note:**

> Yep, I'm still riding that Widomauk train lol. This started as a background distraction from my other fics, but it kind of got out of hand and is currently on track to be the longest thing I've ever written, and one of my favorites.
> 
> I'm hoping to update this every four days, but that may change if I run through my backlog of chapters too quickly. Also, I wrote like 90% of this on my phone and it's entirely unbeta'd, so please forgive any wonky spelling or formatting issues lol.
> 
> There's not much else to say— this one gets kinda out there at times, so I hope you'll trust me and come along for the ride!

The jingling of countless tiny bells filled the air as Mollymauk Tealeaf hopped around in circles, alternating between practiced dance moves and aimless flailing.

“Can you stop?” Orna sighed. “You’re giving me secondhand anxiety.”

The bells came to an abrupt halt. Molly crossed his heavily adorned arms and insisted, “I’m not anxious! I’m excited!” He shook out his hands one last time and peeked through the thick curtain separating their dressing room from the main ballroom. 

“Anyone here yet?” Mona asked while Yuli helped straighten one of the ornamental scales of her makeup.

“People are just starting to arrive,” Molly said. “We’re not due out for another hour or so. How am I supposed to wait that long? I want to be out there. I want to be  _ dancing _ . I want to make a bunch of Empire lackeys fall in love with my mystery and beauty until they regret their decisions to be upstanding members of society.”

“So, a typical weekend for you,” Mona laughed.

Molly flashed her a fanged smiled before settling down on a plush velvet settee. 

Their troupe had been hired to provide the entertainment for tonight’s ball hosted by the Cerberus Assembly in honor of their latest round of new initiates. It was much stuffier an event than Molly would typically have enjoyed performing at, so he was just hoping to shock the sensibilities of a few stuffy intellectuals while giving a good send-off to the new recruits’ freedom and youth.

Yasha settled down on the settee beside Molly and rested her sword across her lap. Her dancing was of a different variety than his— she was scheduled to do a traditional Xhorhasian blade dance to kick off the evening. Of course, there was no such thing as a traditional Xhorhasian blade dance, but none of the party organizers seemed to know this, and they were willing to pay good money to see it. Good enough money that Yasha had made up a brand new routine for the night, just to make sure no one in the crowd recognized it if they happened to have been to The Fletching and Moondrop Private House of Curiosities, the upscale tavern-slash-burlesque-club where the troupe performed near-nightly shows for their wealthy patrons.

But Molly often preferred the excitement and mystery of these “off-site” shows, as Gustav called them. They paid far better, and it was always a delight to see the reactions of folks who normally would never go near the House, which was often derided as being one step “above” a brothel (Molly fucking hated that phrase— there was nothing wrong with brothels either, as long as everyone working it was willing). They’d brought in plenty of new devoted clients from events like these.

Soon enough, the noises outside picked up and it was clear that the party was nearly in full swing. By the time the orchestra started up, Molly was back to his jittery pre-dance hopping and fidgeting, and no one seemed inclined to complain.

Then, finally, from outside in the main ballroom, a magically amplified voice boomed out, “Please welcome our entertainment for the night, a private show from the talented dancers of The Fletching and Moondrop Private House of Curiosities. To begin the festivities, we have the mighty Yasha performing a ceremonial dance from the exotic and mysterious wastelands of Xhorhas!” 

The other dancers murmured a wave of encouragement to Yasha as she gripped her sword and pushed through the curtain.

—————

Caleb tugged at the uncomfortably high collar of his formal robes and hunkered down between Astrid and Eodwulf. The room was far too crowded for his liking, and his two friends offered little protection from the masses around him.

“Calm down, Caleb,” Eodwulf laughed. “It’s a  _ party _ , it’s supposed to be  _ fun _ .”

“Maybe for you,” Caleb said, his voice high and thin. He could feel sweat beginning to bead at his hairline and on his upper lip under his short beard.

Astrid offered a comforting arm around him. “It’s okay, Caleb. I know parties aren’t really your thing, and I’m not really in the mood for this either. Let’s just watch some dancing, eat some free food, and call it an early night.”

“ _ Ja, ja _ , I like the sound of that,” Caleb murmured, right as the crowd erupted in claps and cheers. He stood on his tiptoes to try and see over everyone’s heads, and he barely could make out a large, darkly dressed woman emerging from a curtained-off room. The crowd was beckoned into a wide circle around her, and beside him, the much taller Eodwulf grinned and said, “Now  _ that’s  _ a hell of a woman!”

The orchestra started up again, playing something much more discordant and somber than their previous arrangement. Caleb could barely see the dancer, but he caught occasional flashes of arcane torchlight on her blade and could hear the loud thuds of her boots against the marble floor as she jumped and stomped.

“Is it cool? What’s she doing?” Astrid asked, trying like Caleb to crane her neck enough to see.

“ _ Ja _ , it’s cool,” he replied. “She’s dancing.”

Astrid removed her arm from around Caleb to playfully punch Eodwulf in the shoulder. 

The music reached a crescendo along with the sounds of stomping feet and jangling bells. Those who actually could see the display gasped collectively and Caleb caught a glimpse of the sword high enough in the air that this Yasha person must have thrown it straight up. Apparently she caught it, because the crowd erupted into claps and cheers as the music faded away.

The crowd parted to allow Yasha to return to the back room, while Oremid Hass took to the orchestral dais again and declared in his amplified voice, “One more round of applause for Yasha, everyone!” The crowd obliged enthusiastically for a few moments before he continued, “For the remainder of the evening, please enjoy the talents of the rest of Fletching and Moondrop’s renowned dancers. This is a celebration of your accomplishments— eat, drink, and dance to your heart’s content!”

The other dancers flowed out of the back room that Yasha had just disappeared into, six in total and all dressed in elaborate costumes covered in glittering gemstones and body paint. Caleb couldn’t get clear enough looks to make out any more detail than that. He turned to Eodwulf and said, “Well, I’m sure that was very exciting for those who could see it. I’m going to get some wine, or mead, or whatever’s strongest.”

“Don’t leave us behind!” Astrid laughed, and Eodwulf followed as well. 

Soon Caleb was a bit more content, leaning against an oddly out-of-place metal pole in the middle of the space, stuffing his face with fancy finger foods and washing it all down with swigs of sweet wine. A beautiful woman with fiery hair and a matching outfit was doing some sort of dance with fans up on the dais with the orchestra, but Caleb had lost sight of the others.

As he and Astrid and Eodwulf watched the fiery woman onstage, Caleb felt a tap on his shoulder from behind.

————

Molly hadn’t planned on being a little shit to this random bystander who was blocking his pole, but it was just part of his nature, especially when faced with a handsome, wide-eyed man who seemed to have no idea how to react to a scantily-clad, heavily-tattooed purple tiefling tapping on his shoulder.

“I… uh…  _ hallo _ ?” the man fumbled, and the two friends flanking him laughed.

Molly put on his best sultry smile and grabbed onto the pole, leaning in close to the man’s face. “Normally I’d never say this, but I need you to stop touching my pole now. I’d like to handle it alone tonight, if you don’t mind.”

Molly could actually see the man swallow nervously as he grasped to find words. “Oh, I… what?” His eyes kept flickering up and down Molly’s exposed torso, then left and right between his dangling golden nipple piercings.

Molly slipped around the pole, herding the awkward ginger man away from it. He almost put a hand on the center of his chest to playfully push him, but he saw him recoil away as Molly lifted his hand, so he decided against it. So without touching the man, he wrapped his tail up the pole and said with mock coyness, “What’s a strong, handsome man like you doing getting all flustered?”

The man’s face turned almost entirely red with blush that clashed spectacularly with his freckles and beard, and Molly found him genuinely adorable in a way he didn’t often think about clients. His friend elbowed him and laughed, “ _ Ja _ , Caleb, you’re so  _ strong  _ and  _ handsome _ , what’s the problem?”

Molly’s eyes flickered to the friend, who with his partially braided blond hair and full beard and long dusky robes was actually quite handsome and striking, but he also had the air of someone who knew he was these things a bit too well because people had been fawning over him about it his whole life. Reading this confidence, Molly unlooped his tail from the pole and dragged its spade tip down the blond man’s chest, catching a bit on the silver adornments on his robe. “Now what’s  _ your  _ name, big guy?” he asked with a grin that was as much bared fangs as it was a smile.

“ _ Ich heiße _  Eodwulf, but I’m afraid I don’t swing your way,” he laughed good-naturedly as he stepped away from Molly’s tail. “I’m sure Caleb and Astrid here would love a show, though.”

Astrid, a cute woman with dark freckled skin and a wonderful mane of corkscrew curls, leaned against Caleb’s shoulder and said, “Wulfie’s not wrong. For a dancer, you’re doing a lot of talking and not a lot of dancing.” Her voice was light and playful, and Molly guessed they would have gotten on well if they’d met outside of his work.

As is, he just smiled and said, “You know, you’ve got a point, darling.” He turned from the trio in a twirl of flowing skirts and belts of tiny bells and gripped the pole firmly, lifting himself up off the ground with just his upper body. He wrapped his legs around the pole and adjusted his hands to swing around it, then continued his winding, twirling way up the pole about ten feet off the ground. A small crowd was now gathered at the base of the pole, watching in wonder as he moved with no supports or safety net. 

This was where Molly was truly in his element, showing off his moves and his body to an enraptured audience. He could feel the eyes on him and hear the amazed whispers below, and he reveled in it. He gripped the pole tight with just his legs, then dropped his torso so he was looking at the crowd upside-down. He winked as he reached out one arm and waved down at Caleb, who glanced around awkwardly before offering a quick, shy wave in return. Molly grinned at him before lifting himself back up and wrapping his hands around the pole again. 

As soon as he could feel his muscles tiring, Molly began his downward routine until he was close enough to the ground to hop off the pole. He landed on the marble with a bounce and a smile before bowing and waving to the cheering crowd.

He had intentionally dismounted right in front of Caleb, who was gazing at him with nothing short of wonder. He pranced by him and murmured, “That one was for you, darling,” with a wink before disappearing into the crowd again.

————

Caleb watched the spot where Molly disappeared for what felt like hours, but was probably just a few seconds before Eodwulf elbowed him and said, “So, I’m going to be the best man at the wedding, right?”

“ _ Die Klappe halten _ ,” Caleb grumbled. “He’s an entertainer, it’s his  _ job  _ to act like that. I’m nothing special.”

“No one else got a personal wink-and-wave,” Astrid pointed out.

Caleb crossed his arms stubbornly. “I’m not going to throw myself at the first person who flirts with me, especially not when that person has been paid to flirt with everyone at this party.”

Eodwulf clasped his shoulders and leaned down to match his height. “Caleb, that exact logic is the reason you haven’t gotten laid in  _ years _ .”

Caleb rolled his eyes and sarcastically drawled, “ _ Ja _ , because I’ve definitely been in this exact situation before.”

“You know what I mean,” Wulfie insisted. “You need to just…” He looked dramatically around the room with a sweeping hand. “Just grab life by the balls and make a move if you find someone attractive!”

Caleb crossed his arms. “I’ll pass. I do things at my own pace, you know this.”

“Fine. It’s your loss,” Eodwulf said with a shrug. 

Astrid, who had been oddly quiet recently, said, “We just need to find a way to help you find the confidence to pick up that pace.”

Caleb could practically see the gears whirring in her mind as she dove into the machinations of a new scheme. He wasn’t sure he was ready to know what she was plotting yet. 

Eventually the three of them got whisked into a conversation with some new initiates and their own mentor, Trent Ikithon. Talk of politics and current events and life in the Assembly soon distracted them from thoughts of the strange tiefling dancer. 

————-

The party was winding down, and the dancers had just been dismissed to encourage attendees to begin leaving. Molly sprawled across the entire settee in the back room, with his legs across Yasha’s lap. His glittering face paint had begun to run a bit, and his purple curls stuck to the sweat of his forehead and the back of his neck. 

“That was fun!” he laughed, toying with the bells on his golden bracelets. “I don’t think many of those nerd wizards had seen anything like me before.”

“Most people have never seen anything like you before,” Yasha pointed out. 

“Truer words were never spoken,” Molly agreed emphatically. Then he rose with a sigh and went over to the small rack of clothes that hard turned this space into a makeshift dressing room. He dug out the leggings and billowy shirt of his street clothes and resignedly began changing back into them. He and Orna helped each other clean the residual makeup from each other’s faces, and soon the whole troupe looked like a pedestrian group of friends again. And just like that, the party was over. 


	2. Scheming

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Things start falling into place.

“You’re up to something. I can tell. So what are you plotting?” Caleb asked Astrid with a furrowed brow. 

“Nothing! Don’t worry about it!” she insisted.

“Well, which is it? Is there nothing going on, or is there something and I’m supposed to not worry?”

Eodwulf said through a bite of bread, “Look Caleb. You used to be so confident and suave, and somewhere along the line, that fell through. We’re just trying to get the old Caleb to come back out a bit!”

“ _ Ja _ , what Wulfie said! Do you and your perfect memory recall  _ anything  _ that might have caused you to become more, y’know…”

As Astrid struggled to find inoffensive words to describe Caleb, he interrupted, “Painfully awkward? Meek and cowardly? Doomed to sleep alone forever with only my cat for company?”

“I didn’t say that,” she replied. 

Caleb thought back to his younger years, at the top of his class surrounded by both friends and admirers, enjoying crowds and parties and kissing everyone who wanted him to— which was many of them. 

And now he was sitting in a quiet library with his two best friends who were actually his two  _ only  _ friends, eating a quick lunch at a side table before going back to an afternoon of study. 

He tried to pinpoint where the shift happened, what went wrong between then and now, but he came up blank. He’d been a confident young man with the whole world ahead of him, and now he was _this_. 

For a brief second he thought he smelled smoke and looked around the library in a panic, but nothing was awry. Must have been his imagination. 

Astrid and Wulfie were giving him concerned looks as he came back to the moment. 

“You’ve been sleeping, right?” Eodwulf asked as casually as he could make himself sound. 

“ _ Ja _ .”

“And on a regular schedule, not two overnighters in a row then twenty hours of sleep?” Astrid added. 

“ _ Ja, ja _ , I’m fine,” Caleb growled. “Now I have some research to do. I’ll see you later.” With that, he got up and stormed off back to his spread of books. Frumpkin was waiting for him on a stack of closed tomes, and he meowed a greeting as Caleb sat down. 

“Hi there,” Caleb muttered, scritching the cat behind the ears. “You don’t think I’m a pathetic loser, do you, Frumpkin?”

He headbutted Caleb’s knuckles and mrowed loudly. 

“ _ Ja _ , that’s right,” Caleb said drily. At least if he alienated his last two friends, his cat wouldn’t abandon him.

A flutter of wings atop a nearby bookshelf drew his attention, and he saw a small white and tan barn owl settle into place. 

“Wulfie, stop spying on me,” Caleb said to Eodwulf’s familiar. The owl puffed its feathers and shrieked the horrific demon-scream of a barn owl. “Shoo, Moonfeather!”

The owl cawed again before alighting off towards the high glass dome of the library ceiling. 

Caleb returned to his book and his cat and his quiet isolation. 

 

———

 

“Look at this!” Molly said, counting a small stash of gold and silver coins as he lay on his stomach atop his bedsheets. His legs were bent at the knees and his tail swished delightedly around them. “I’m basically a fucking nobleman, I’m so rich!”

“What are you going to blow it all on in one go?” Orna asked, and Molly caught Yasha chuckle over where she was watching the storm outside by the window. 

“I haven’t decided yet,” Molly replied, rolling onto his back and holding a gold coin up to glitter in the meager light. “Maybe I’ll get us all some new clothes. Not stage clothes, just nice, real stuff to wear around town. Or maybe fancy new jewels for my horns. Or possibly drugs. Probably some combination thereof.”

Molly soon lost interest in reveling in his wealth and turned over to look out his window. They were in the shared sleeping quarters above the House of Curiosities, which was more or less a glorified attic space. The ceiling met at a high point above, and the exposed wooden rafters served as supports to hang the curtains that separated everyone’s beds. Right now, all the curtains were open and the space felt as big as it ever did. Molly was lucky to have a corner space, so he got two wooden walls and a window. 

“Do you ever think I could have a real relationship?” Molly asked out of the blue. “Y’know, like, one where they’re not just with me for the crazy awesome sex and the thrill of being with someone…  _ taboo _ like me?”

“Gods, Molly, it’s noon on a weekday,” Bo said from where he sat reading on his bed. “Can you lay off on the existential crises?”

“It’s a serious question!” Molly argued. “Besides, I crawled out of my own grave barely two years ago. My whole existence is an existential crisis.”

“I think two years old is far too young to be thinking about relationships,” Orna said. 

“You know that’s not how any of this works,” Molly grumbled. 

“I think you’d do great in a relationship,” Yasha said softly. “You just have to find the right person.”

Molly hummed noncommittally. “I could be a noble’s trophy husband and lounge around in silks and furs all day then attend fancy balls at night. That could be fun.”

“That’s not really a healthy goal,” Yasha pointed out. 

“What about… huh. Fuck, marrying rich has been pretty much my only plan for the future.”

Molly toyed absently with a coin while he imagined what his dream partner would look like. But that was the problem— he found beauty in everyone, in Yasha’s nontraditional femininity and Bo’s blunt orcish features and the smiles of random passersby on the street and the auburn waves of that dorky wizard from the gala last night. 

Yuli finally sat up from where she’d been sketching in her journal. “What if you were married in your old life, and you met them now and fell in love again? Wouldn’t that be so romantic? Like soulmates or something.”

“How would that work? Did they lose their memory too?” 

“Sure.”

Molly frowned. “I don’t think that other person, the one who got buried in a shallow unmarked grave, was very good if they met that end. So if they did have a partner, that person probably isn’t someone I’d be interested in, or who’d be interested in me. Hopefully.”

“I guess you’re right,” Yuli sighed. “But you never know. Don’t you ever think about trying to get your memories back?”

“No,” Molly replied, simply and without hesitation. “The past is the past and it should stay that way.”

 

—————

 

Caleb had to reread the passage several times before the meaning of its words sunk in.  _ Should the caster desire to alter the recollections of lived experiences that a subject retains clearly, it is possible through a small variety of arcane means, given the correct time, components, and skill on the part of the caster. Creating artificial memories or entirely eliminating real ones is far more complex an endeavor than the editing of an existing recollection, but it can be done successfully under fortuitous circumstances. _

Caleb groaned in annoyance and dropped his head onto the pages of the book. It had been hours since Wulfie and Astrid had left, and the warm glow of sunlight through glass had long since been replaced by orbs of blue-white light that floated around the library. He was trying to comb through these books for any scraps of information on time magic, and he was coming up empty-handed. Trent would be furious if he continued failing like this. 

Astrid and Eodwulf’s questions about his sleep rang in the back of his mind, and he reminded himself that he wouldn’t be able to get anything done if he was an exhausted wreck. He resolved to finish scanning this chapter then go right up to his quarters.

None of the chapter seemed related to any sort of time magic, so he jumped quickly from passage to passage before something caught his eye.  _ It is best to attempt to falsify memories in the same location as the true memory took place. _

Caleb closed his eyes, and suddenly he was a teenager again, kneeling in the ashes of his family’s home. Herr Ikithon was crouched beside him, an uncharacteristically soft expression on his haggard face. “It’s okay, Caleb. These things happen sometimes, and such accidents are truly tragic, but nothing can be done now. We’ve lain your mother and father to rest. This is just ashes now. We need to get you home.”

“It is all my fault,” Caleb choked, fat tears falling into the ashes around his knees. His younger voice was strange to his ears, higher-pitched and more heavily accented. 

“It’s not your fault. How could it be?”

“I should have been here! I should have protected them!”

Herr Ikithon's grip tightened on his shoulder. “You were many miles away, studying in Rexxentrum with me, where you belong. You never could have anticipated something like this, and you can’t live your life in regret over it. So mourn, of course, and come to terms with your loss, but don’t ever blame yourself for this.”

Caleb placed his hand over Herr Ikithon's and nodded through the tears. “ _ Ja, ja,  _ I will try, Herr Ikithon.” 

He stood from the ashes and brushed the blackness from his knees. He tried not to wonder what, or whom, the ashes had once been. 

In the distance, someone dropped a heavy book onto a table, and Caleb was jerked back into the present moment in the library. He could still feel the crunch of charcoal and ashes under his knees and smell the smoke in the air. He cursed his perfect memory for being able to reconstruct that horrific scene in such detail. 

Gods, what he wouldn’t give to have Trent wipe that memory from his mind. 


	3. Maledict

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Three chapters in, I finally found the plot!

The following weeks passed with little event. Molly spent his stash of gold on all the things he’d said he would, and his new colorful coat and the sun and moon charms in his horns were proof of it. He’d just given his last gold coin to a beggar child, and had a meager handful of coppers to feed himself on until his next payment. 

He was headed towards the local market to get some fresh fruit to enjoy in the spring sunlight. He took his usual shortcuts through side streets and alleyways, and he was almost to the market before that became an issue. 

“Stop right there, tiefling,” a voice called from the shadows of a doorway in an alley off to Molly’s left. 

He sighed and said, “Look friend, you can risk arrest by robbing me for a few copper, or you can let me keep moving while you reconsider your choice of career.”

A half-elf, pallid and dirty and wild-eyed, emerged from the shadows brandishing a knife. “I don’t care about your coins. Gimme all them jewels in your horns!”

Molly was cornered and unarmed, not that he knew how to use a weapon outside of sword juggling anyway. He glanced in both directions down the alley, and neither was a short or straight shot to a main road. So he tried the only thing he had left. 

His Infernal curse echoed through the alleys as if a dozen copies of him had snarled it out from all directions. The mugger paused as the voiced rang out around him, and Molly almost thought he was going to back down before he instead charged forward, yelling, “The fuck did you just do to me?”

Molly barely had time to duck out of the way of his swinging knife. He tried to reach up and grab the attacker's wrist, but he missed and cried out in pain as the knife dragged across his palm, spraying the stone alley wall in an arc of red. 

As the blade sliced in, something strangely familiar, almost primally instinctual, surfaced in Molly’s chest. He stepped back, raised his bloodied hand towards the man, and willed darkness into his eyes. 

A surge of power roiled through Molly’s body, culminating at the gash in his palm. The attacker cried out and dropped the knife, his hands flying to rub at his eyes. 

“I can’t see!” he cried out. “I can’t fucking see! The fuck did you do to me, you godsdamned devil?!” The man gaped up at him with wide eyes that had gone entirely black, iris and sclera and all. 

Molly honestly had no answer, so he turned and ran down the alley until he rounded a corner and burst out onto a road. He reached under his coat and tore a strip of his shirt off to wrap his injured hand. 

He tried to parse together what had just happened, but he didn’t even know where to start. He knew his tiefling bloodline offered him certain skills that others didn’t possess, but he’d never heard of anything like this before. He’d blinded that man, and he had no idea how he’d done it. 

Was this his past life coming back to haunt him, after he’d spent the last two years building himself into his own person?

He pulled the bandage tighter around his palm and considered where to go from here. Certainly fresh fruit was no longer on his mind. 

His feet made the decision for him as his distracted mind processed what had happened. He found himself soon standing at the steps leading up to the grand hall of the Cerberus Assembly. Whatever he’d done back in that alley, it had been some sort of magic, and he couldn’t think of a better place to find someone who knew about obscure magic than here. Problem was, he didn’t actually know anyone in the Assembly. 

Molly took the stairs two at a time heading up towards the front door. He got a few odd looks from academic-looking types as they passed him coming down, but none of them looked like they’d react well if a random tiefling stopped them and started trying to ask about open wounds and blindness. 

As he neared the top of the stairs, he waved to greet the guards before they could initiate an interaction. 

“Hello friends!” he greeted. “I was hoping you could help me find someone.”

The guards glanced at each other before turning back to Molly. “If you’ve lost someone, please see a member of the Crownsguard. We’re private security for the Cerberus Assembly only.”

“Oh, no, my apologies. I’m looking for someone  _ in  _ the Assembly.” Molly’s mind was working barely ahead of his mouth as he concocted a plan on the fly. “His name is Caleb. He’s in maybe his early thirties or so, a couple inches shorter than me, medium-length auburn hair?”

“Do you have a last name?” the older of the two guards demanded. 

“Tealeaf,” Molly declared. Then he realized that probably wasn’t what the guard meant. “Oh, you mean Caleb’s last name? Unfortunately I didn’t catch it when he and I met.”

“And what were the circumstances of your meeting?”

Molly could feel his scheme crumbling around him. “We met at a party, and, um, discussed some theories about ancient blood magics, but like I said, I didn’t get his last name so I’ve had some trouble finding him, even though we planned to continue our discussion.” He spoke quickly, and luckily the guards seemed overwhelmed enough that the older one simply said, “Okay, we’ll see what we can do.”

He leaned over and murmured something to the other guard, but Molly only caught what sounded like “...one of Archmage Ikithon’s...” before the guard disappeared into the hall. 

Molly sat on the steps and waited for nearly fifteen minutes before the guard returned, trailed by a bewildered-looking Caleb. 

Molly hopped to his feet, thrilled and shocked that his plan had actually worked. 

“Do you know this man, sir?” the guard who was escorting him asked. 

“ _ Ja,  _ I do,” Caleb replied, his face unreadable. “Thank you for bringing him to me.”

Caleb gestured for Molly to follow him into the hall, and Molly did so eagerly. 

The interior was a massive gray stone hall, studded with pillars and roofed with flat glass tiles that allowed light in for a variety of plants to grow out of built-in planters lining the walls and to crawl up the pillars as if they were trees. 

Caleb led Molly silently to a bench nestled between two pillars, provided a bit of privacy by the blooming ferns around it. 

“What are you doing here?” Caleb demanded. 

It finally sunk into Molly just how absurd this plan was. He didn’t know Caleb at all— for all Molly knew, Caleb had been drunk off his ass at the party and was nothing like that in his normal life. He could be a fierce and ruthless warmage or a married family man who never wanted to be reminded of the shameful time a dancer made him blush, or—

“Answer the question.” 

Molly had almost forgotten what Caleb had asked. “Oh. Right. Well, it’s kind of a weird story.”

Caleb’s expression was hard to read, but he at least didn’t look furious. “I’m an Assembly Arcanist. Weird is… kind of my purview. And there’s not much you could say that would be weirder than you showing up here in the first place.”

Molly laughed nervously. “That’s fair. You see, I had sort of a strange and possibly arcane experience earlier today, and I don’t know any powerful mages personally, but I remembered you from the ball a few weeks ago, and… this was a really stupid idea, wasn’t it?”

Caleb frowned at Molly’s explanation. “You remembered me?”

“Uh, yeah. Your big blond friend was teasing you, and the other one— Astrid, I think?— she was teasing  _ me  _ for not dancing.”

“Hm.” Caleb took a moment to absorb this news. “I suppose… I guess I could at least hear you out, if you came all the way here for this.”

“Great, thank you so much!” Molly had to restrain himself from hugging Caleb. “So, here’s what happened. I was walking down an alley, which I do all the time, and I got jumped by this guy with a knife, which has never happened before. I’m not a fighter or anything, so I tried to scare him off speaking some Infernal and it didn’t work, then he attacked me with his knife and cut my palm open—“ he held up his bloodied, bandaged hand— “and as soon as that happened, I felt this weird power surge and suddenly he went blind.”

Caleb listened to this story with a dazed look on his face. “He… he cut you open and then went blind? That doesn’t… you said you aren’t a magic user of any kind?”

“Not that I know of,” Molly said nervously. He was just beginning to realize the risk of bringing a stranger into the mix when this could have something to do with whoever used to be operating his body. 

Caleb stared off into the distance, thinking for a moment. “Come with me,” he finally said.

Molly figured he was already in too deep, so he might as well go along with this as well. He followed Caleb out of the main hall and down another greenery-filled passage. 

“So, how have you been since the party?” Molly asked just to break up the silence. 

“Good,” Caleb said, in the flat tone of someone who hadn’t even considered the question. “Uh, you?”

“I was doing pretty fine until this,” Molly replied, holding up his injured hand. “Now things are kind of freaky, and not in the fun way. Speaking of the fun kind of freaky, where are you taking me?”

Caleb frowned as they arrived at a spiral staircase. “A place that’s neither freaky nor fun. A laboratory.”

“Oh.” Molly wasn’t quite sure what to expect from that. He was pretty sure a real wizard’s laboratory wasn’t going to be a crumbling tower full of jarred animal parts and bubbling potions like in the stories, but at this point, he was prepared for anything. 

The room that Caleb guided him to was large and airy, with high ceilings and windows. The tables were covered in strange glass instruments and racks of vials and glowing crystals, but nothing looked terribly ominous. In fact, except for a few messy tables full of towering stacks of books pushed to the edges of the room, it was quite neat and meticulous.

“Don’t touch anything,” Caleb said, right as Molly began reaching for a bottle of shimmery purple potion. “This equipment should only be handled by trained individuals.”

Molly sat down on a stool at Caleb’s gesture. “I think you’ll find I actually am very good at handling equipment,” he said, leaning forward with a grin. 

Caleb looked blankly at him for a second. “...Okay then. Sit there and keep your hands off  _ everything  _ while I get my stuff.”

Molly sighed. He just wanted to get Caleb to blush again like he had the night they’d met. But as soon as he’d mentioned a potential magical mystery, Caleb had turned focused and business-like. 

He probably shouldn’t have been so disappointed that Caleb was focused on the task at hand, but he was used to making people hot and bothered— it was kind of his job, and normally he was very good at it. 

Caleb returned holding an armful of strange equipment. “I just realized, I never got your name,” he said as he arranged it all on the table in front of Molly. 

“Oh, right! I’m Mollymauk Tealeaf. Molly to my friends.”

Caleb shook his proffered hand. “Caleb Widogast.”

“It’s a pleasure, Mister Widogast,” Molly purred. 

“Actually, it’s either Doctor or Arcanist. Take your pick.” Caleb didn’t even look at him as he whirled around the table of arcane tools. 

Molly was glad to see that none of the implements he had brought looked sharp or dangerous. Soon, Caleb pulled up a stool in front of him and sat down, scooting it a bit closer until they were only about a foot apart. “Hold still,” he ordered, and Molly obeyed, trying to ignore he twist of nerves in his gut. 

Caleb placed a hand on Molly’s forehead to hold him in place and pulled up on one of his eyelids with a thumb. He held up a round, flat crystal with a faint iridescent tint that was mounted on a runed brass stick. The lens was positioned in front of Molly’s held-open eye and Caleb squinted at him through it. 

“What’s this supposed to do?” Molly asked. He could feel his eye drying from lack of blinking. 

“None of this is ‘supposed’ to do anything. I have no idea what I’m dealing with, so I’m just trying anything I can think of that might help me understand.” Caleb seemed to be talking to himself as much as Molly as he squinted through the glass lens. 

“Well, are you gaining any new understanding?”

Caleb let go of Molly’s eyelid and set the lens aside. “Not really. You have very red eyes. That’s about it.” He picked up another instrument from the table. This one looked almost like a large tuning fork with gemstones embedded at the tips of the tines. Caleb waved it over Molly’s body, watching the gems closely. “Hm. Nothing out of the ordinary,” he muttered. 

This continued for about half an hour, with Molly being scanned, poked, and prodded with every sort of arcane instrument. Finally, Caleb flopped down onto his stool with a huff and sighed, “ _ Scheiße _ , that was useless. Time for plan B. Wait here, and don’t touch anything.” Almost as an afterthought, he snapped his fingers and an orange cat appeared on his shoulder. He dumped the cat in Molly’s lap and said, “Frumpkin will keep you company and let me know if you fuck with any of my stuff.”

With that, Caleb was gone in a flurry of robes, and Molly was left alone and confused with a magic cat and the growing suspicion that he was in way over his head with this. 

 

——————

 

It had been a long time since Caleb had found a problem that he couldn’t solve. As he paced down the hallway, he was filled with a mix of frustration and excitement. On one hand, it would probably be best if he could figure out what was going on with this strange tiefling and be done with it. But on the other, there was something thrilling about the potential of a new discovery. 

Lost in his thoughts, he almost forgot about how he had first met Molly, and the thought of how he’d explain this new development to his friends didn’t cross his mind until he was knocking on Eodwulf’s door. 

“Hey Caleb,” Eodwulf greeted in Zemnian. “What’s up?”

Caleb pushed past him into the room. Arcanists were afforded fairly nice suites, and Wulfie had filled the front room on his quarters with comfortable couches and blankets and cushions. Astrid was curled up on one of these couches, an open book resting on her knees. “Is something wrong?” she asked, also speaking Zemnian, as the three always did when they were alone together. 

“I have either a problem or an opportunity, depending on how optimistic you’re feeling,” Caleb said after closing the door tight behind him. 

Eodwulf sighed. “What did you get yourself into this time? Is it something with Trent’s fucking time magic obsession?”

“No, it’s something new,” Caleb said, a bit of excitement creeping into his voice. “I found a tiefling who had some very intriguing experiences with magic earlier today despite never having any magical abilities before. It’s unlike anything I’ve ever heard of.”

“What kind of magic?” Astrid asked, tossing her book aside and coming to stand with the others. 

“Some sort of… blood magic? I’m not sure.” Caleb shrugged. 

Eodwulf scowled. “This is all pretty vague and ominous. Have you actually  _ seen _ this person’s magic?”

Caleb felt blush rising in his pale cheeks. Of course that should have been his first request of Molly, to try and recreate the effect and prove that it was real. “I haven’t,” he confessed, averting his gaze. 

Eodwulf pursed his lips. “Okay. Come on, Astrid. Let’s see what this tiefling is all about.”

Astrid seemed a little more eager than Eodwulf, but there was still an air of hesitation to her. 

As they headed back to the lab, Caleb explained Molly’s story to them. When he got to the part about the blood, Astrid and Eodwulf both paused. 

“He… what?” Astrid asked, a squeamish look on her face. 

Eodwulf grew even paler than normal and said, “That’s pretty fucked up. Are you sure he isn’t just diseased or something?”

“Yes! There’s definitely something magical going on here,” Caleb insisted, though now he was second-guessing himself. 

He threw open the door to the laboratory, and shockingly, Mollymauk was patiently perched on the stool where Caleb had left him, petting a purring Frumpkin in his lap. 

Astrid cocked her head and frowned at Molly, while Eodwulf broke out into a wide grin. “Oh I see what’s going on here, Caleb,” he said in Zemnian before switching back to Common and addressing Molly. “I almost didn’t recognize you with clothes on.”

Molly smiled and crossed his arms. “I could start stripping if you’d like your memory jogged, but it’ll cost you.”

“I’m good, thanks,” he laughed. 

Caleb hadn’t thought to warn his friends that the tiefling in question was the dancer from the ball the other week. In all honesty, he’d almost forgotten about all of that in his determination to figure out this magic dilemma. 

“I hear you’re some sort of sorcerer now. Interesting development for a pole dancer.” Eodwulf watched him with cold, steely eyes.

Molly just smiled, but there was fire behind his red eyes. “I agree.”

Eodwulf reached for his component belt and pulled out a small paring knife normally used for cutting ingredients for spells and potions. “Why don’t you show us what you’ve got?” He tossed the blade to Molly, who caught it deftly. 

Caleb grew nervous watching this exchange. Eodwulf was one of his best friends, but that also meant that Caleb knew every bit how ruthless he could be at times. 

But Molly seemed unfazed by Eodwulf. He shrugged off his fine coat, set it carefully aside, and tugged up the sleeve of his white shirt. 

 

————

 

Molly was beginning to regret coming to the Assembly as he stood in the middle of an arcane laboratory surrounded by three unfamiliar wizards. The knife he was holding to his own skin didn’t help his nerves either. 

But he’d made his decision, and he was going to live with it. Hopefully. 

He gritted his teeth and dragged the blade across the soft skin of his inner arm, wincing as it cut in and drew blood. He focused on that pain and the frustration he felt at Eodwulf’s attitude and tried to draw up that same power he’d felt in the alleyway. 

Moments passed, and nothing happened. Finally, Eodwulf burst out laughing. “I’m sorry Caleb, but it looks like your little whore here was lying to you. Why don’t you toss him back out on the street where he belongs?”

Anger surged through Molly, and he could feel his heart pounding, the blood rushing through his veins, pouring out the gash in his arm—

Eodwulf screamed and grabbed his face. “Fuck, I can’t—“ his curses devolved into snarled Zemnian that Molly couldn’t understand, though he didn’t need language to intuit the anger and fear in his voice. 

“Do you believe me now?” Molly asked. He suddenly felt tired and breathless, standing there bleeding out in a steady stream. He knew me must have looked truly mad to the others, but he didn’t care.

Caleb rushed forward and grabbed a scrap of fabric off a nearby table to begin bandaging Molly’s wound, while Astrid took Eodwulf by the shoulders and murmured soothingly to him.

“I’m fine, _ alle ist gut _ ,” Eodwulf said after a moment. He looked up and met Molly’s eyes, and Molly could see the fury behind them as an inky blackness faded away, leaving them clear, pale gray again.

Molly took a step closer to him and he flinched away. “Not bad for a lying street whore, is it?”

Eodwulf rubbed at his eyes one last time before straightening to his full height over Molly. “Someone with such dangerous abilities and no capability to control them shouldn’t be allowed around the common folk. He’s a danger to everyone. We’ll keep him here at the Assembly until we understand what’s going on.”

Eodwulf was looking at Molly as he spoke, but he was clearly addressing Caleb and Astrid. It made Molly feel like a creature being observed under glass. 

“ _ Nein _ , absolutely not,” Caleb said. “He’s a person, not a test subject.”

“He can be both,” Eodwulf growled. 

Caleb ignored him and faced Molly. “We’re not going to hold you prisoner. If you still want answers, I would greatly appreciate if you would return for more research, but you’re free to go at any time.”

Molly pulled his coat back on and pocketed Eodwulf’s knife. “I still have questions. I’d be happy to come back as long as this one won’t try to throw me in a dungeon.” He gestured dismissively at Eodwulf.

“I’ll deal with your investigation personally,” Caleb promised. 

Astrid was murmuring to Eodwulf as she led him out of the room. Molly could feel much of the tension dissipate from the air as his form disappeared down the hallway. 

“When should I come back?” Molly asked, hands in the deep pockets of his coat. He ran a finger over the carved handle of Eodwulf’s knife. “I think I’ve had enough for today. My apologies.”

“ _ Nein _ , I perfectly understand,” Caleb said. “Can you return same time tomorrow?”

“Yeah, that works. My work tends to be more of a late-night schedule.”

“Right,” Caleb said, blushing at the reminder of Molly’s occupation. 

“It’s not a problem, is it?” he asked. “Me being a dancer and all. You won’t be risking your reputation if you’re seen with me or anything?”

“No. Besides, if anyone recognizes you, that means they’ve watched you somewhere before and have no room to judge.”

Molly laughed. “Good point.” 

Caleb walked him out of the Assembly, back through the winding hallways until they got to the plant-filled front hall. Along the way, Caleb offered to take Molly to a healer for his cuts, but Molly politely declined. He said it was because they didn’t hurt, but in truth, he wanted evidence that this wasn’t all a dream when he woke up tomorrow. 

On the front steps outside the Assembly, they said their goodbyes for the day and Molly headed back towards the House of Curiosities, the sense of dread in his stomach growing larger with each step. 

 

—————

 

Caleb watched Molly’s kaleidoscope coat disappear into the crowd below and stayed out in the steps for several more minutes. 

What had he gotten himself into? He hadn’t been able to keep up with everything he’d been assigned by Trent lately— how was he supposed to handle his own one-man research project?

But even as he had that thought, he knew that this wasn’t just a research project. That Molly was more than that. 

Caleb remembered well the thrill of his first successful spell. He’d been in the yard between his house and where their fields of wheat began. He’d created a small pile of twigs and leaves like he’d use for kindling in any fire. The stone well was off just a few feet behind him, with a fresh bucket of water on the rim in case things went badly. 

Sitting cross-legged in the dirt, his feet bare, he waved his hands over the twigs and murmured a few carefully-practiced words under his breath. 

With a quiet  _ whoosh _ , the pile went up in flames. He jumped to his feet and cheered in joy, but as he stood watching the leaves twist and curl into charred black husks, a spark of fear grew in the back of his mind. 

He was a magic-user now, and the weight of that responsibility settled heavy on his young shoulders. He could feel that what he’d just done was barely even the beginning of what he was capable of, and that both thrilled and terrified him. 

Caleb was halfway back to his quarters before his mind joined him in the present. He didn’t envy Mollymauk for his mysterious new powers. He understood the fear he must be going through, and he hoped for both their sakes that they could find answers.

 

————-

 

Molly slipped into the dressing room barely in time to get ready for tonight’s show. Orna scowled at him. “You’re late! I haven’t seen you all day. You’ve been keeping yourself out of trouble?”

“Of course,” Molly lied. He hung up his coat on the designated rack and tossed his shirt off into a pile underneath. 

“Really? That how did those happen?” She pointed to the haphazardly bandaged cuts on his hand and arm. 

“Oh, these? I dropped my blades when I was practicing a new routine.”

Orna cocked an eyebrow. “We both know those swords aren’t sharp enough to cut like that.”

“Fine, you got me. I got jumped in a fucking alleyway, okay? It was scary and awful but I’m fine now.” He chose to leave out the bits about the blinding curse and the Cerberus Assembly.

“Shit, Molly, seriously?” she gasped, her irritation giving way to sympathy. “Are you okay?”

“Yes, I’m fine, no need to worry!” he said with far more cheer than he felt. 

“Well, I guess it’s a good thing you’re not doing the poles or silks tonight.”

Molly nodded as he sat down to begin applying his makeup. 

He added long silky gloves to his normal outfit for the night to cover his wounds. By the time he was out on the stage, he was feeling a little better, but his whole heart wasn’t in his routine. He flashed coy smiles from behind his twirling blades and shook his hips plenty and his audience certainly had no idea he wasn’t feeling his best. By the time Orna joined his routine, they were totally enraptured. Molly made sure he didn’t make eye contact with anyone, lest his imagination color their eyes solid black. 

As soon as he and Orna were back in the dressing room after the routine, Orna said, “You sure you’re okay, Molly? You seemed really out of it just now.”

Molly stripped to his smallclothes and shrugged just his coat on, already making his way for the stairs up to their attic. “I’ll be fine,” he insisted, and hoped it was true. 


	4. A Dog on a Leash

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> More dead ends, and some unfortunate metaphors.

Trent leaned forward across his desk, lank hair framing his sallow face in long sheets. “Wulf tells me you’ve taken on a bit of a… a _pet_ _project_ recently.”

“I suppose you could say that, sir,” Caleb replied. He always felt like a scared apprentice again when Trent expressed displeasure at him. 

But to his surprise, instead of ordering him to cease his investigation of Molly, Trent said, “I admit, I’m very intrigued by this tiefling, if what Wulf told me is true. As you know, we have other tasks at hand, but I believe that Astrid, Wulf, and I can handle our current research alone. I would like for you to continue your examinations of the tiefling, and report your findings back to me regularly.”

Caleb was split. On one hand, he knew he was being cut from their project because he hadn’t been making any headway lately. But in the other, he was far more intrigued by this new project with Molly. He wouldn’t have argued with Trent’s decision even if he was furious about it, though, so he just said, “Thank you for allowing me to pursue this, sir. I’ll keep you updated on my findings.”

“Thank you, Caleb. You’re dismissed.”

Caleb hurried out the door of Trent’s office and over towards the lab to get ready for his meeting with Molly in the afternoon. 

The hours flew by as Caleb gathered supplies and references, prepared a new notebook, and readied the space for Molly. 

He stood outside waiting for just a few minutes before Molly came bounding up the steps. 

“I wasn’t sure you’d come,” Caleb confessed as he approached, wearing the same brightly colored coat as yesterday. It was a gray and windy day, and the coattails flapped around his legs. 

“I wasn’t either,” Molly laughed. “Your Eod-whatever friend isn’t going to murder me, is he?”

“ _ Nein, nein _ , Eodwulf is not involved in this,” Caleb reassured him. “I have permission from my superiors to conduct this as a private investigation.”

Molly winked as he passed him on the way through the main doors. “Sounds good to me. Let’s go investigate, privately.”

Caleb blushed as he followed Molly inside. He tried to focus on the fact that Molly was the subject of his academic research project and not how he was a stunningly attractive man whom Caleb had first seen half-naked, covered in glitter, dancing in a pole. 

Once they reached the lab, Caleb pulled up a stool next to Molly. “Now that this is an officially sanctioned project, let’s move forward with proper protocol.”

Molly nodded along. “You scholars and your big words.” He chucked as he said it, but rubbed the back of his neck and stared pointedly out the window as he said this. 

Caleb frowned. “Um, okay.” He wasn’t sure what else to say, so he just turned back to the notebook sitting next to him on the table. “Shall we begin?”

“Yeah, sure.” Molly pulled Wulfie’s knife from his pocket and dropped it on the tabletop. 

“Not with that,” Caleb said, blanching. “I shouldn’t have let you slice yourself open like that yesterday, not until I had some grasp of what we’re dealing with. Today will just be talking.”

Molly seemed to let out tension that Caleb hadn’t noticed he was holding. “Okay. I can handle that.”

“Okay, so first of all, have you ever displayed any sort of arcane abilities before? Even minor things that you may have assumed was coincidence, or a trick of the mind?”

“I… don’t think so. Not that I know of,” Molly replied. 

“Have you had any recent interactions with enchanted items or potions?”

Molly frowned for a second. “I mean, I do drugs every now and then, but those are usually plant-based. You know, like mushrooms and stuff.”

“Mushrooms aren't plants,” Caleb said, jotting that down in his notebook.

“Um, okay. But you’re not gonna… I mean, I know that kind of stuff isn’t always legal. You’re not involved with the Crownsguard or anything, right?”

“No,” Caleb said, almost chuckling. “The Crownsguard actually tends to turn a bit of a blind eye to the goings-on of the Assembly. You’re safe here.”

They proceeded through more routine questions, and nothing Molly said seemed to add up to his sudden, strange new abilities. There was only one common thread that Caleb could pick up on. 

“You’ve been a bit vague on details concerning your childhood. I understand if you don’t want to share everything about yourself with a stranger, but is there  _ anything  _ relevant you may be leaving out?” Caleb’s pen tapped rhythmically against the page of his open notebook. 

“Not that I know of.” Molly sat with his arms crossed. 

“You’ve said that a lot.”

“I know.”

Caleb wasn’t sure what to make of Mollymauk. He didn’t seem to be lying outright, but he also wasn’t telling the whole story. And Caleb wasn’t exactly a reliably smooth talker, so he wasn’t sure how best to get this information from Molly. 

Molly stretched and yawned exaggeratedly. “I never knew an interview could be so tiring,” he sighed. “Do I get a free lunch out of this or something?”

“We can get lunch in an hour or so,” Caleb replied curtly. “I’d like to see if we can make some progress first.”

Molly seemed to accept this deal and nodded. He waited patiently while Caleb sorted through his arcane instruments and brought a couple over to him. 

“Hold this,” Caleb demanded, handing him a metal rod with a cluster of crystals on the end.

Molly’s face lit up with wonder. “Ooh, is this a magic wand?” He hopped to his feet and waved the rod dramatically, pointing it out towards a window. Nothing happened. 

“ _ Nein _ , it is not,” Caleb said after Molly was done twirling it around, making little  _ whoosh  _ and  _ pew  _ sounds under his breath. He hadn’t the heart to interrupt him— the tiefling was oddly adorable, in a sweeter and more naive way than Caleb would have expected.

“Oh. Then what is it?” 

“The crystal should light up if it detects that its wielder has arcane abilities.”

Caleb leaned in closer towards the crystal, then grabbed Molly’s coat from the table to toss over himself and the crystal to darken the scene. 

As he suspected, the crystal was glowing almost imperceptibly, too low to make out in full sunlight.

Outside the cover of the coat, Molly giggled. “What’re you doing under there, Doctor Widogast?”

Caleb popped back out from under the coat and tossed it back onto the table. “I was… uh… examining the rod…?”

Molly’s face was split in a wide grin as Caleb fumbled and failed to find a non-suggestive answer to his question. “And what did you find? Does my rod look good?”

Caleb closed his eyes and sighed, trying to recover his dignity. “It was covered in rocks and glowing. I’m no expert on tiefling anatomy, but you may want to get that checked out.”

“Good suggestion. Luckily, I’ve got a doctor right here…” He trailed his fingers down the front of Caleb’s fine blue and silver robes. 

Caleb stepped back, blush covering his cheeks. He’d tried to go along with the joke and instead had walked himself right into an even worse trap. “I. Um. My doctorate is in transmutation theory. I am not a qualified medical doctor.”

Molly chuckled at his response. “There you go again with all your big words.” Then his face lit up. “Wait. You said the crystals were glowing. Does that mean I’m magical?”

“Oh,  _ ja _ . There was a very slight glow. I think you might have even more latent abilities than what you’ve discovered so far.”

“Latent?” Molly frowned. 

“Yes.” When Molly continued gazing at him in confusion, he clarified, “Oh, sorry, ‘latent’ means ‘hidden’ or ‘not yet manifested.’”

“Right. Thanks,” Molly murmured. 

Caleb made some more notes in his book while Molly watched. 

“Caleb,” he said mid-way through the wizard’s note taking. All of his humor and jest had faded, and he sounded downright somber. 

“ _ Ja,  _ Mollymauk?”

“Am I dangerous?”

Caleb froze with his pen halfway through a word. Molly’s question instantly sent him back to being nineteen years old, standing next to Herr Ikithon while he watched several low-ranking Soltryce Academy wizards trying to put out a dozen burning training dummies. Caleb had just lit them all up with one spell. As the flames burned away the burlap and hay, the young Caleb asked the same question his future self had just heard: “Am I dangerous?”

Herr Ikithon frowned down at him. “That’s a complicated question, boy.”

“Does it have to be? Shouldn’t it just be a yes or a no?”

Herr Ikithon guided him over to one of the benches at the perimeter of the training courtyard. They sat in silence while his mentor thought. 

Finally,Herr Ikithon looked at him and said, “Is a dog dangerous because it has sharp teeth and a jaw strong enough to break bone?”

“No,” Caleb said after a moment of deliberation. “A dog is only dangerous if it has been trained to attack, or forced into a situation that makes it feral.”

Herr Ikithon offered him a smile that did nothing to warm his sallow face. “Good, Caleb. You always were a quick one. With your level of magical ability, you’re like a pup that’s been bred for the fighting pits. If you train properly and learn to control yourself, you’ll only be a danger to those who seek to harm you. But if you slack on your training and give in to your baser instincts, who knows what dangers you could pose.”

Something brushed his hand— that wasn’t part of the memory. 

As he mentally returned to the present, he realized Mollymauk had taken a hold on his hand and was brushing his thumb across the back of it. “Caleb? Er, Doctor Widogast? Are you okay?”

Caleb blinked rapidly and the scene in the courtyard dissipated to be replaced by the present moment in the laboratory. “Hm? What? Oh, I’m sorry. I must have drifted for a moment.”

Molly retracted his hand and leaned back. “You just happened to zone out right after I asked if I was dangerous? So I’ll take that as a yes, then?”

“It’s not like that,” Caleb argued. “It’s like… it’s like dogs. A well-trained hound on a leash is not dangerous. A feral one escaped from a fighting ring is. It’s all about your training.”

Molly stared at Caleb in silent disbelief for a couple moments. “I’m not a fucking dog,” he growled finally. 

Caleb was, yet again, left speechless. “I… that’s not what I meant,” he murmured once he found his voice again. It was hard to concentrate with Molly’s angry red eyes boring into him. 

“Really? How else was I supposed to interpret that, then?” He crossed his arms and continued glaring at Caleb. 

“I don’t know,” Caleb said. “It was a stupid thing of me to say. My mentor once told me something similar, but… I think I fucked it up. He phrased it much better.”

Some of the anger faded from Molly’s pretty face. “Your mentor used to compare you to a dog? Don’t you think that’s kind of fucked up?”

“ _ Nein.  _ No,” Caleb said instinctively, though something about that old conversation with Trent was beginning to bother him now that Molly had framed it like that. “Like I said, I just worded the idea poorly. Though I was always more of a cat person anyway.”

Molly relaxed a bit more and even offered him a bit of a smile. “Hey, deflecting with humor is  _ my  _ thing.”

Caleb forced a smile as he shut his notebook. “Let’s go get lunch. I think we could both use a break.”

Molly eagerly jumped up and followed Caleb to the kitchens on the lower floor of the building. Nothing was being served in the dining hall as it was technically between lunch and dinner hours, but the kitchen staff had come to recognize Caleb in the recent months, after Astrid and Eodwulf voiced concern about how frail he had become and forced him to keep up with a healthy amount of eating. 

“Hello, Mister Caleb!” Caliana, one of the head cooks, exclaimed. Caleb was quite fond of her— she seemed eternally joyful and was always happy to slip him a meal if he missed it in the hall. He had never corrected her use of “mister” instead of his titles. 

“ _ Hallo,  _ Cali,” he replied with a smile. “I’m afraid I missed lunch again. I was busy with my friend Molly here.”

On cue, Molly stepped forward and waved at Cali. “Nice to meet you, ma’am.” He seemed unfazed by the black dragon scales that were visible under her curtain of dark hair. 

“Oh, I love your coat!” she exclaimed. “I’ll be right back with your lunches.”

Caleb slipped past the counter and headed back with her, saying, “I’ll help.”

Cali glanced over her shoulder as they disappeared from Molly’s view around a corner. “Who was that Molly person? They didn’t look like part of the Assembly or the Soltryce Academy.”

“He’s not. I can’t say too much, but he’s part of a new project I’m working on.”

Caleb held up two plates while Cali scooped some stew out of a pot onto them. 

“Ooh, intriguing!” she exclaimed. “He seems nice. He didn’t even flinch at my scales!”

“ _ Ja _ , he does seem nice,” Caleb said absently while Cali loaded the plates with hearty rolls and a pile of roasted root vegetables. 

She smiled at him and wiggled her eyebrows. “So, is he the only test subject who gets special private lunch privileges?”

“He’s the only test subject, period,” Caleb said gruffly. “He’s a bit of a… unique specimen.”

They headed back out of the kitchen, each carrying a plate of food, and were greeted by the sight of Molly sitting on a countertop. 

“Oh that smells divine,” he said, hopping down and accepting his plate from Cali. “Thank you, ma’am!”

She offered him a wide smile before saying her goodbyes and ducking back into the kitchen. 

Caleb led Molly to the nearly-empty dining hall to eat their meal. As Molly spooned up a mouthful of stew, he asked, “So how long do you think it will take to figure out what’s going on with me?”

“I don’t know,” Caleb confessed. “It could all fall into place tomorrow, or we could still be doing this in a year. If I had any way to guess, I’d be a lot closer to an answer than I am.”

Molly pushed his half-finished plate away. Something seemed to have stolen his appetite. “This just started yesterday. What if it gets worse? What if I lose control of it? Maybe Eodwulf was right, and I should be locked up for everyone’s safety.”

Caleb could see how distressed Molly was and didn’t know how to make him better. “I don’t think that’s necessary at this point,” he said. “If that does happen and you do become a danger, we can deal with it at that juncture. But not now. You’re fine for now.”

Molly nodded, calming a bit, but he still didn’t return to his food.

They finished their late lunch in a tense silence before returning to the lab. 

Caleb had made little headway by the time the sun hung low over the city and Molly needed to leave for his work. Caleb walked him out of the Assembly headquarters then went straight to the library. There had to be a record of this happening somewhere, at some point. 

Caleb wasn’t sure if he should be excited or terrified that he seemed to be wrong about that assessment. He returned to his quarters mere hours before sunrise and was no closer to understanding Mollymauk than he had been the moment he’d shown up on Caleb’s doorstep.

He soon fell into a restless sleep, dreaming of blood, blackness, and a handsome smile. 

 

—————

 

Molly was doing fortunes tonight instead of dancing, and he was happy for the change. Normally he loved being on stage, but the events of the last couple days were taking a toll on him. And Yasha would be tending the bar at the same time, which made it all the better. 

They were wiping down the bar in preparation for opening soon. Yasha was characteristically quiet for a while until finally she said, “You’ve been gone a lot the past couple days. And Orna told me about what happened to your hand. Are you okay?”

Molly paused from his wipedown of the bar. “I…” He looked around to make sure they were alone. “I’m not sure. Weird shit has been happening. Do you remember that one time that creepy guy tried to grab you after that show, and it was the first time your wing thing happened?”

Yasha nodded. 

“I think I found my wing thing.”

She cocked her head to the side and frowned. “But you’re a tiefling, not an aasimar. How’s that possible?”

“No, no,” Molly grumbled. “It’s not literal. I just meant… some weird shit is going down, and I don’t know what’s causing it. So I found a wizard who’s gonna help me figure it out.”

Yasha’s frown deepened the longer Molly spoke. “Do you really think that’s a good idea? What kind of weird shit are we talking? And how do you know you can trust this wizard?”

Molly shrugged as he returned to his cleaning with renewed vigor. “I don’t have a good answer to any of that. I’m hoping Caleb can help.”

“Caleb is the wizard?”

“Yeah. Arcanist Caleb Widogast of the Cerberus Assembly.”

“Shit, Molly,” Yasha whistled. “An Assembly mage? What are you getting yourself into? How bad is your weird shit?”

“Bad enough to qualify as ‘desperate times,’ I think. But I’ll tell you everything later tonight.” He wasn’t sure what to say to her yet. He wasn’t even sure what he was doing, or if it was the right thing at all. 


	5. The Grave

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Some progress is made, some is lost, some dreams are had.

Caleb almost missed breakfast, just barely sliding into a seat next to Astrid in time to fill his plate with eggs and cold cuts.

“Hey sleepyhead,” Astrid greeted, ruffling his bedhead hair with one hand.

“I take it things aren’t going too well with the tiefling, then?” Eodwulf asked from across the table. “You only miss sleep when things are going poorly.”

Caleb rubbed a hand over his still-tired eyes. He was glad they were speaking Zemnian; it still came easier to him than Common, even after all these years. “I was in the library all night. Do you know how many books talk about the relationship between blood and magic? It’s a lot.”

“If there’s anything we can do to help, just let us know,” Astrid said, patting Caleb’s shoulder. 

“Speak for yourself,” Wulf said. “I don’t want anything to do with that… that blood devil thing.”

“I think that’s a bit dramatic,” Caleb said with a scowl. “You were the one taunting him for being a lowly… What did you call him? A ‘street whore?’ And now he’s a terrifying blood devil.”

“He can be both,” Eodwulf said around a mouthful of ham and cheese. “The worst of both worlds.”

Caleb was half-tempted to keep arguing about this with Wulfie, but he knew it would be pointless. Besides, what did it matter to him if his friend didn’t like his research or its primary subject?

Astrid soon changed the subject and they finished their breakfast in a more amicable mood. 

Caleb headed to the lab afterwards to see if he could do anything with the information he’d already gathered. He was buried in his own notes when he heard a soft knock on the door. “Hey,” Molly’s voice floated in. 

“Oh,  _ hallo _ ,” he greeted, sitting up from his reading. “How did you…?”

“The front guards are starting to recognize me,” Molly explained, pointing to the peacock tattoo on his face. “I’m pretty hard to miss.”

“Oh. That’s true. Well, are you ready for some more experimenting?”

Molly grinned and swished his tail flirtatiously. “I’m always up for experimenting.”

“Why do you always do that?” Caleb asked before he could stop himself. 

“Do what?” Molly looked innocently confused. 

“Act all… all flirty with me. It’s not a very funny joke.”

“It’s not a joke,” Molly said. “I just like flirting, especially with attractive people. And sometimes they flirt back, and it’s even more fun.”

“I… oh. Um. Well, I’m…”

Molly watched with an amused smile as Caleb tripped over his own words. 

He finally managed to get out, “I’m not attractive, though.”

“Sure you are!” Molly laughed. “Your messy hair is adorable, and you have such pretty eyes—"

Caleb sighed heavily. “That’s always what attractive people say to plain ones, isn’t it? ‘But you have nice eyes!’ It’s the last bastion of compliment when nothing else is true.”

Molly studied him for a moment. “You’re really not fishing for compliments, are you? You actually don’t think you’re good-looking.”

“I— you know, why are we even having this conversation? This is stupid, I’m supposed to be studying you.” As soon as the words left his mouth, Caleb winced. 

Molly leaned on the edge of the table next to Caleb with a wide grin. “You can—"

“Don’t.”

“You can study me any—" 

“ _ Mollymauk _ .” 

“—any way you want!” By the time Molly got the last word out, they were both laughing, with Molly doubled over and Caleb trying to hide his chuckling behind his hand.

Once he’d recovered some of his composure, Molly sighed, “Okay, even if we never figure out this magic bullshit, I can rest easy knowing I made a stuffy Empire wizard laugh at a sex pun.”

Caleb brushed his hair back out of his face uncomfortably. “Er— let’s just get on with the research, okay?”

Molly must have taken pity on him, because he agreed and settled onto the stool next to him. 

Caleb became momentarily distracted by the rich solid red of Molly’s eyes, the way a couple dark violet curls fell across his forehead between his horns, the curve of the tattoo up along his neck and onto the handsome arc of his cheekbone—

Now was not the time for such thoughts. Molly was watching him knowingly, but thankfully kept quiet with just a hint of a smile on his lips, his soft, full lips—  _ nein _ ,  _ nein _ , Caleb was a professional with ethics and he would  _ not  _ think about a research subject in such terms. At least not until he was safely alone in his quarters tonight.

Gods, how many years had it been since he’d had someone else’s hands on him?

He banished those thoughts by turning back to his notes. He wasn’t looking forward to this part. 

“Mollymauk,” he said gravely, “I’m afraid I’ve done all I can to try and identify your latent abilities through my own magic or equipment. I think I’ll need to take a closer look at them in action.”

Molly pursed his lips. “Yeah, I figured we’d get to this point sooner or later.” He pulled Eodwulf’s paring knife from his coat pocket. 

“We need to get you a safer place to store that,” Caleb muttered, half to himself. “Go stand there, in the open space by the windows.”

Molly went as ordered and began tossing the knife around in twirling arcs that scattered glimmers of sunlight off the blade. “This isn’t a family heirloom or anything, is it? Blondie’s not gonna go on some vengeance quest to get it back from me?”

“ _ Nein _ ,” Caleb said, gathering his equipment nervously. “They are provided by the Assembly as needed, and Eodwulf is not terribly sentimental. I’m sure he’s already requisitioned a new one. He breaks them all the time.”

Molly folded his coat on the windowsill so as not to soil it with blood. He then stood with his back to the window, facing Caleb, his sleeves pushed up to his elbows. “Okay. Let’s do this.”

Caleb approached and sat on a stool in front of Molly. “Whenever you’re ready, do your thing and try to blind me.”

“Oh. Are you sure?” Molly asked, concern written into his normally jovial features. 

Caleb nodded. “ _ Ja _ . I need to experience this if I’m to truly understand it.”

“If you say so.” Molly gritted his teeth and made a quick incision on his forearm, just under the other scabbed-over cut. 

Caleb focused intently for any sign of spellcasting. Molly’s mouth wasn’t moving in speech, he wasn’t close enough to touch Caleb, his eyes were screwed shut in concentration, and there were clearly no components in his hands. By all accounts, he shouldn’t have been able to cast a single spell. 

And for a moment, it seemed like he wasn’t going to. He stood with his hand held out, blood dripping down his forearm and splattering on the white marble floor below, and nothing was happening.

Caleb frantically recorded everything he was observing, noting Molly’s stance, the amount of blood he’d drawn, the time of day, the location of the cut, anything he could think of that could be affecting his ability to do this magic. 

Then Caleb’s notebook and pen clattered to the floor as his vision went black and he froze. 

“Mollymauk.”

“It worked,” Molly said, a mix of wonder and guilt in his tone.

Caleb turned his head from side to side, looked up and down, tried to see if he could make out anything in this darkness. But it was complete and utter blackness in every direction, until a bit of light started peeking through and his vision slowly faded back in. 

He blinked rapidly and rubbed instinctively at his eyes. “Well. That was something.”

He dove for his notes and began frantically recording what he’d just experienced while it was still fresh in his mind. 

Molly approached from behind. “Are you alright…?”

Caleb held up a hand for silence, and Molly quieted and took a step back. Once Caleb was done scribbling down his observations, he turned back to Molly. 

“Sooo… how was it?” Molly asked.

Caleb took a moment to reply. “It’s strange. There are spells to impart temporary blindness, but you clearly weren’t using any sort of traditional spellcasting. I need you to be entirely honest with me, Mollymauk. Were you telling me the whole truth when you said you had never trained in any kind of arcane arts?”

Molly broke eye contact and frowned while he thought. “I… Yes. Yeah, I was.”

Caleb crossed his arms. “Generally people who are telling the truth don’t have to think about it that long.”

“It’s not that simple,” Molly said. He seemed to be resisting the direction that the conversation was taking, which in Caleb’s mind proved they were going the right way. 

“Explain to me what you mean by that.”

Molly, who was normally so confident and smooth-talking, seemed to cave in on himself. “I don’t know, okay? I don’t fucking know!” His voice grew almost to a shout. 

“But what does that  _ mean _ ? How do you not know?” Caleb grew increasingly frustrated at Molly’s vague responses. 

Molly took a step closer, and Caleb was reminded that he didn’t know this man really at all, and he’d invited some sort of unknown blood sorcerer into his laboratory with barely any explanation or investigation. 

He almost told Molly to leave, but then he remembered that Trent wanted him to do this, had actually reassigned him onto his own solo project to figure this out. So he took a deep breath to steady himself and said, “I’m sorry, Mollymauk. I didn’t mean to snap at you.”

Molly stared at him in silence for a moment. “Can I have a bandage or something, at least?” His voice was soft and thin. 

Caleb hadn’t even noticed that Molly was still clutching his bleeding arm with his bare hand. “ _ Schieße,  _ Molly,  _ ja, tut ist mir leid.” _

He scrambled over to the pile of bandages he’d brought in for just this reason. “Come here.”

Molly approached him and silently held out his arm. Caleb tightly wrapped the soft white bandages over the wound until the red stopped seeping through.

“Thanks,” Molly murmured under his breath. “I’m not trying to be difficult, I promise. I just  _ am _ .”

“It is okay,” Caleb said slowly. “I’m not very good at… at people.”

Molly smiled at him, and his panic faded away. 

 

—————

 

Molly still wasn’t sure what to make of Caleb. At times, he seemed seemed cold and distant like the aloof intellectual Molly would have expected him to be, but he also had moments of surprising vulnerability— laughing at stupid jokes, the tender way he held his arm while wrapping the bandages.

Without thinking, he reached forward and closed Caleb’s notebook as he said, “I have some things to tell you that might be useful. Can you promise to just listen for now?”

Caleb glanced at his book and looked like he was going to argue for a moment, but then paused. “Okay,  _ ja _ . What do you want to tell me?”

Molly pulled up a stool next to him. His heart was pounding hard; he could feel it in his bleeding arm. No one outside of his friends at Fletching and Moondrop knew what he was about to tell Caleb. It occurred to him in that moment that he’d never actually  _ told  _ anyone this story. The others just knew it because they’d seen it first-hand.

“I don’t know how to say this, really,” he confessed with a bit of nervous laughter. “When I’ve been telling you that I don’t know things about my history with magic, I’m not just being stubborn or dumb. I really mean it. I…” He took a deep breath and forced himself to look at Caleb. “I don’t remember anything beyond about two years back. I have no idea who I was or  what I was capable of or what kinds of magic I’ve been exposed to.”

It was hard to read Caleb’s expression as he absorbed these words. There was a bit of anger, though it faded into a softer look of concern the longer they sat in silence together. 

“This. Um. This changes things,” Caleb said hoarsely. “You didn’t think this was an important detail to share earlier?”

“I’m not  _ that  _ stupid,” Molly laughed humorlessly. “I knew this probably had something to do with all the shit that’s going on with me. But it’s kind of personal, y’know?”

Caleb sighed deeply; Molly could tell he was trying to keep himself from an angry outburst. After a moment, he said, “I understand that. But don’t you think that maybe this situation calls for sharing some personal information like that?”

“It’s not—“

“Gods help me if you try to claim ‘it’s not that simple’ again,” Caleb growled. 

Molly felt his nails digging into the heel of his palm. What did this posh wizard in his almost-literal ivory tower know about what he’d been through, how bad he’d been fucked up by it? 

He managed to keep himself from shouting, but his voice dripped daggers as he snarled, right up in Caleb’s disconcerted face, “Two years ago, I clawed my way out of my own fucking grave. I could barely speak, I couldn’t remember how I’d gotten there or even my own name. All I knew was the taste of dirt, and the fact that someone had dumped my body in a shallow, unmarked grave in the wilderness. So I’m fucking sorry if I don’t like talking about that!”

Caleb stared at him in blank silence for longer than Molly was comfortable with. 

Finally, he groaned in a tired voice, “What the fuck have I gotten myself into?”

Molly couldn’t help it; he began laughing hysterically. Caleb looked at him with concerned, somber eyes, but remained silent. 

“It sounds so much worse when I say it out loud,” Molly laughed manically. “I crawled out of a grave! I died! I was buried! And I dug my way out with my bare hands! How fucked up is that?”

“Very,” Caleb conceded, his dismay growing with every passing moment. “Are you… are you okay, Mollymauk?”

Molly sniffed and wiped his nose with the back of his hand. He hadn’t realized he’d started crying. “No, I don’t think so. But I will be. I always am.”

Caleb shifted awkwardly on his feet. “Uh, is there anything I can do? Do you need anything?”

Molly almost tried to stay stoic and regain his composure, but he was never a great liar. He stepped forward and pulled Caleb into a tight hug, burying his face in his shoulder. 

Caleb immediately tensed and froze, but he didn’t try to pull away. Molly hadn’t thrown himself at him because he expected Caleb to be a great hugger, but right now, Molly just needed something solid and real to ground him, and Caleb was the only thing available. Eventually, Caleb lifted one hand and patted Molly on the back. “Um. There, there?” Caleb said in the voice of someone who had very little experience giving or receiving physical comfort. Even in the depths of his own self-pity, Molly’s heart broke a bit for him.

Molly stepped away, wiping the last traces of tears from his cheeks. “Sorry about that,” he said. “I’ve been having a rough few days.”

“It’s fine,” Caleb said, his voice and eyes distant. 

“Is it okay if I go now?” Molly asked. “I don’t think I’m up for any more tests.”

“ _ Ja, ja _ , of course,” Caleb muttered. “I also need some time to… to process this.”

Molly took a moment to gather up his coat and knife while he tried to look less like he’d just had a total breakdown. 

“I’ll walk you out,” Caleb offered, and Molly was thankful for the company as they both exited the lab. 

As they disappeared down the hallway, a small, pale barn owl glided silently out of the laboratory door. 

 

—————

 

Caleb didn’t go to dinner that evening, nor to the library for research. For the first time in recent memory, he went back to his quarters and took the day for himself. He gathered a tower of overdue library books, reorganized his meager closet, hung his blankets and Frumpkin’s bed by the open window to air out. All the things he normally neglected in his frantic attempts to do as much as he could with the brief hours of each day. 

He couldn’t think about what Molly told him. It was too terrible, too horrifying, and it just got worse the more he thought about it. He knew he would need to deal with it eventually, but not right now. Now, he needed come down from the emotional maelstrom of the afternoon. 

Sunset found Caleb curled up on his windowsill seat, a book on his knees and Frumpkin snoring softly at his feet. The book was, for once, not a part of any research, but an entertaining adventure tale called  _ The Daring Trials and Tribulations of Ser Taryon Darrington _ . Caleb couldn’t remember the last time he’d read a book for fun, not in a frantic search for more knowledge.

As the sun fell deeper towards the horizon, Caleb put his book down and looked out at the city. He’d grown up on a farm, but this massive metropolis had become his home over the years. Sometimes he missed the rolling hills of the Zemni Fields, the way as a child, he’d run through his family’s farmlands after harvest time because it felt like they went on forever, like even if he ran for a hundred years, he’d still be in the fields he called home. 

Now he knew that their fifty acres was actually quite small, and that home was ash, and he was sitting in a stone tower two hundred feet above a sprawling labyrinth of a city, trying to help an amnesiac and possibly undead erotic dancer figure out why cutting himself gave him magic powers.

Somewhere along the way, his life had gotten pretty weird. 

He could no longer avoid thinking about Mollymauk. He had encountered plenty of mystery and intrigue during his time as an Arcanist, but few stuck with him like Molly was proving to do. Normally he was pursuing an idea, a theory, new or long-lost knowledge. But this was a person, a person who was scared and alone and who liked flirting and dancing and who had laughed and cried more times in one afternoon than Caleb did in a month.

He could still feel the pressure of Molly’s arms around him, the hotter-than-human warmth that radiated off him. He’d wanted to hug Molly back, to comfort him and tell him that everything would be fine. But Caleb was no good at that kind of thing, so he’d stood there like a fool while Molly cried into his shoulder.

Caleb moved to the couch and read by arcane light until he could hardly keep his eyes open any longer. He crawled into bed and nestled into the blankets and tried not to think about graves or blood or Mollymauk. 

He couldn’t escape his mind even as he slipped into sleep, though. 

He stood in the Assembly’s ballroom, with the jarring Xhorhasian music playing in the background, though the whole room was empty except for himself. He spun around, and the space was impossibly large, its ornately painted ceiling seeming to soar up hundreds of feet. 

As he turned, he realized that a metal pole had appeared in the center of the room. Molly was twirling and spinning around it like he had in real life, but he was far too high up, and Caleb tried to yell for him to come down, it wasn’t safe up there, but Molly just laughed and leaned back with a wink and a wave, and it was just like the party, except Molly’s arms and chest were lacerated with countless cuts and blood poured down his outstretched arm like water off a roof. He kept smiling and laughing and the blood kept flowing, far too much blood for a single body, and suddenly Caleb was standing knee-deep in crimson, screaming at Molly to stop, to come down, to let Caleb help him. But Molly just laughed and smiled and said, “But Mister Widogast, why would I come down?  _ You’re  _ the one who’s going to drown!”

The scene shifted and Molly was stretching much like he had on the pole, but the wounds and blood were gone and he was lying naked in an endless sea of silk and cotton, his soft cock nestled between his coyly pressed-together thighs. “You can study me any way you want,” he laughed, rolling over and wiggling his ass with a wave of his tail. Caleb silently watched him luxuriate in the softness of the sheets like a cat enjoying a spot of sunshine. He wanted to reach out and touch Molly, to grab him and kiss him and fuck him into the silk until he was screaming with pleasure. But he couldn’t move, could only watch as Molly rolled about playfully, teasingly, and then slipped a hand between his own thighs. He gasped with a small smile, and Caleb could imagine the finger he was surely slipping into himself.

“ _ Ich will dich _ ,” Caleb groaned. “ _ Ich will jetzt dich,  _ Mollymauk.”

Molly laughed and finally let his legs fall open. Caleb whimpered at the sight of him crooking two fingers into his own hole. He reached out towards Caleb with the other hand and said, “Then come and take me.”

Caleb looked down at himself to unlace his breeches and screamed— he was soaked from the navel down with glistening wet blood, staining the sheets around him. He realized his hands were bloodied too from where they’d rested on his thighs, and his screams grew louder. 

“What’s wrong?” Molly asked, head cocked innocently to the side. He’d removed his fingers and was lounging back on the sheets. 

“Can’t you see?!” Caleb shrieked. 

“See what?”

Molly’s eyes turned— or had they always been?— solid black instead of red, and he laughed, and something smelled like smoke, like burning wood and searing flesh—

Caleb sat bolt-upright in bed, covered in a cold sweat. His stomach was a nauseated knot and he was hard in his linen sleep pants; the contrast between the two sensations sickened him further until he softened as he sorted through the images in his dreams.

Unlike his waking memory, he couldn’t recall the dream in perfect detail. He just saw flashes of blood, of Molly naked, of black eyes and ashes.

He breathed slowly for a few moments, and the images continued to fade. He was too tired to bother discerning the exact time, but the starkly flat blue light filtering in through the window told him it was nearing sunrise. He knew he wouldn’t be able to fall back asleep. 

He dragged himself out of bed and entered his washroom, collapsing down on the edge of the copper tub. With a wave of a hand, the tub filled with warm water that he slid himself into. There was a quiet  _ mrmph _ sound from outside the ajar door and Frumpkin trotted inside.

“ _ Hallo _ ,” Caleb greeted, holding an arm outside the tub for the cat to rub his purring face against. “Frumpkin, I think I might be a bit fucked up in the head,” he said. 

Frumpkin replied with a meow.

“ _ Ja _ , it is undeniable,” he said aloud. “Maybe Astrid and Wulfie are right. Maybe something did go wrong with me and now I’m all broken and wrong.”

The confession didn’t make him sad. He just felt hollow, staring at the stone wall while the steamy bath water failed to comfort him.

 

 

—————

 

After he left the Assembly, Molly headed into the city. He’d made good tips on his tarot readings and had plenty of extra coins jingling in his pockets, beckoning to be spent. 

He wandered through the endless markets of Rexxentrum, careful to stay on main thoroughfares rather than shortcuts and alleys. He just wanted to look at pretty things and not think about what he’d told Caleb earlier. 

When he finally returned to the House, he was laden down with several packages. One held a large, ornate tapestry honoring Bahamut that he planned to hang on the windowless wall of his quarters. He didn’t worship Bahamut, but the tapestry was beautiful and it had clearly been crafted with love, and it made Molly happy to look at. He’d also been delighted to find a new pair of breeches that matched the colors of his favorite coat, and the half-striped, half-checkered pattern was just off-kilter enough for him.

Up in the attic room, Yasha watched Molly unroll and hang his new tapestry. 

“How have your meetings with the wizard been going?” she asked. 

Molly finished hammering the last nail before replying. He stared at the tapestry instead of meeting Yasha’s gaze as he did so. “Not great. I told him everything.”

“...everything?”

“Yes, everything. The grave, the memory loss, the way I could hardly speak. I think he’s mad at me for not saying anything sooner, but he actually handled it better than a lot of people would have.” Molly sat down on his bed and began unlacing his tall boots. “I guess I’m probably not the weirdest thing an Arcanist has ever encountered.”

“Is it wise to trust him like that?” Yasha asked, her soft, deep voice tinged with concern. “You’ve only known him a few days.”

Molly laughed. “Yasha, darling, when have I ever done anything wise in my life? My whole two-year-long life?”

That earned him a hint of a smile from Yasha. “True. Why change now?”

“Exactly,” Molly said. “Just because this weird shit is happening doesn’t mean anything needs to change.”

But as he flopped back onto his bed and stared up at the rafters, he knew it was a lie. These abilities would change everything, somehow. Maybe they already had.  



	6. Digging

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Things go very, very wrong.

Caleb had his first check-in with Trent after breakfast, so he forced himself to brush his hair out and dress presentably after his bath. Eodwulf was missing from their usual breakfast table, so Caleb and Astrid chatted alone. 

“Have you made any more progress with, what’s his name? Molly?” she asked. 

“I have, I think. I let him use his powers on me.”

Astrid laughed. “You’re one dedicated motherfucker, Caleb. Wulfie’s been complaining about how terrible it was being blinded now for days.”

A small part of Caleb was proud that he’d been tougher about something than the tall, strapping Eodwulf. 

“It was a bit frightening, but I knew it would be temporary,” he replied.

“Did you, though? I don’t think we really know anything about this guy.”

“I do,” Caleb said, perhaps a bit too defensively. 

Astrid arched one eyebrow at him and flashed him a playful smile that reminded him why he’d once fallen for her, long ago in their youth. “Oh? You’ve been having lots of long emotional talks with him? Getting to know each other in that romantic laboratory?”

Caleb rolled his eyes. “It’s not like that and you know it. I’ve been studying him, in a professional capacity. I knew what I was getting myself into.”

“Sure you did,” Astrid replied dubiously, though unlike Eodwulf, she seemed to find the whole situation more amusing than frightening. 

Caleb finished his last bite of sausage and scooped up Frumpkin from where he was play-fighting with Copper, Astrid’s cat, under the table. “I have a meeting with Trent. I’ll see you later.”

She waved goodbye as he carried Frumpkin out of the dining hall and towards Trent’s office. 

He wasn’t sure what he was going to say in his report. He had all his notes tucked away in his rucksack, but he hadn’t actually recorded Molly’s biggest revelation. Logically, he knew it was a key component of the study, but he also remembered how upset Molly had been when sharing, and it felt like a betrayal of trust to report it to anyone else, even Trent. 

He hadn’t made a decision before he was knocking on the dark oaken door to Trent’s office. 

“Come in,” came the immediate reply. 

Caleb entered and settled down into his usual armchair. The office was large, walled in bookshelves with all sorts of arcane trinkets arranged on tabletops and housed in curios and display cases. The formality of it had been intimidating to teenage Caleb, but it now felt like a second home. 

Trent sat behind his heavy wooden desk. An open notebook and a steaming cup of tea occupied the space in front of him, and the rest of the desk was cluttered with stacks of books and loose papers. 

“How are things going with your tiefling friend, Caleb?” Trent asked, lounging back in his chair. He’d tied his gray hair back in a low, greasy ponytail today, and he looked even more tired and dour than usual.

Caleb pulled out his notebook as he answered. “They’re going as well as I could hope.” He then launched into a recap of the tests he’d done and the things he’d discovered, culminating with the story about letting Molly use his powers on him. 

Trent scowled at this. “Your reasoning was good, but that was a reckless way of going about it. You should have had someone else in the room, observing and ready to call in a healer in case things went awry.”

Caleb felt the same shame he’d been feeling at Trent’s disapproval for nearly two decades. “I’m sorry, sir. You’re right, I shouldn’t have done that alone.”

“What’s done is done,” he waved dismissively. “Just don’t put too much faith in this stranger, okay?”

“ _ Ja, ja,  _ of course sir,” Caleb replied, eyes downcast. 

Trent tilted his head and frowned at Caleb. “Now, is there anything else you would like to share?”

Caleb stared blankly at the ground, trying to look like he was racking his brain instead of internally debating whether or not to betray Molly’s trust. 

“ _ Nein _ , not that I can think of right now, sir,” Caleb replied, making sure to look up and make eye contact with Trent as he said it. “I’ll let you know if anything else comes up.”

“Yes, please do.” Trent’s voice was cold, but his gaze felt like it could have cut Caleb like a hot knife. “Well, I should let you go. I don’t want to make you late for your next meeting with the tiefling.”

Caleb nodded and said his goodbyes, hurrying out of the room with Frumpkin on his heels. 

Something about Trent’s reaction to his lie shook Caleb to his core. It was as if he’d known Caleb was lying. Of course, Trent had been the one to teach him how to lie convincingly, so maybe he know all of Caleb’s tells, even ones that Caleb himself didn’t realize.

His worry followed him to the library, where he rushed to find one specific book before his meeting with Molly. Upon finding it, he dropped it off in the lab and waited patiently on the front steps for him to show up.

 

——————

 

Molly considered not going to Caleb today, or ever again. He had already said far too much, and they were beginning to reach the borders of territories he was not ready to enter. After all, Caleb was an intelligent wizard with access to the vast stores of knowledge of both the Cerberus Assembly and the Soltryce Academy. If anyone could find answers, it would be him. In most circumstances that would be a good thing, but Molly didn’t want answers. He wanted to keep moving on and let the past stay where it belonged.

But against his better judgement, something led him back to the steps of the Cerberus Assembly, and he smiled at the sight of a red-haired man standing at the top, blue robes whipping in the winds of an approaching storm.

Molly took the steps two at a time, coming to a bouncing halt in front of Caleb.

“Welcome back,” Caleb said with a smile that didn’t reach his blue eyes.

It was already clear to Molly that something was bothering his wizard. He decided it was best not to bring it up yet.

By the time they were settled into the laboratory, the rain outside was coming down hard enough that Molly could scarcely make out the shapes of the buildings below through the deluge. It was so dark that Caleb had to light the arcane sconces on the walls despite it being midday.

The mood inside the room was just as dark as the weather outside. Caleb was flittering around between cabinets and shelves, gathering ingredients into a few small piles, and not speaking a word to Molly. Normally he would have tried to break out some stupid joke or cheesy flirtation to lighten the mood, but he had a feeling that would only make things more tense. Something clearly had Caleb deeply troubled in a way Molly hadn’t seen before.

When he was done gathering his components, Caleb grabbed one of the items he’d collected, a small clay pot with a tiny lid, along with what Molly guessed must have been a spellbook.

Despite the tension, Molly was genuinely curious to see Caleb work his magic. He’d never seen this kind of magic being done in person. His experiences were more limited to younger mages doing parlor tricks at parties.

Caleb took the clay pot and gently set the lid aside before dipping two fingers into it. Under any other circumstances, there were about a thousand suggestive comments Molly would have made about that, but he wasn’t in the mood for that right now, and Caleb obviously wasn’t either. When he removed the fingers, they were coated in some sort of thick, highly-pigmented blue paint-like substance.

Setting the open book on the ground in front of himself, Caleb leaned down and began dragging his painted fingers along the ground as he walked in a near-perfect circle. Once that was complete, he drew several lines bisecting it that looked random to Molly but he knew must have had some sort of arcane function.

Caleb continued adding to his spell circle, finishing it off with several runes carefully placed around the interior.

“Sit,” he ordered, pointing to a diamond-shaped space in the middle of the circle, formed by the bisecting lines.

“What are you going to do to me?” Molly asked. He’d never distrusted Caleb before, but something about the tense silence and raging storm and Caleb’s dark demeanor had him worried.

“Another test,” Caleb said. “I think we’ve gotten as far as we’re going to with me just looking at you.”  It took him another moment to add, “Of course, you don’t have to if you’re not comfortable with it.”

Molly shrugged. “Fuck it. I’ve come this far, I’m not giving up now.” He carefully stepped over the blue lines of the spell circle and settled down cross-legged in the diamond.

Caleb began arranging his components around the circle, on top of various runes and intersections of lines. 

“Is this going to hurt?” Molly asked. He nervously scratched at his bandaged cuts through the fabric of his coat.

“No, it should not hurt at all,” Caleb replied shortly. “In fact, I’ve never tried this spell before, so it may not even work.”

After he placed the last components, Caleb sat down right at the edge of the circle with the spellbook nestled in his lap. “Are you ready?”

“Yeah, sure.” Molly clenched his jaw and steeled himself for whatever was about to happen.

Caleb began chanting softly in an unfamiliar language, one hand held out while the other traced something on the spellbook’s page. The light in the room seemed to darken around them, and several of the crystals set around the circle began to glow and lift off the ground, while herbal components lit on fire and began smoking slowly. 

Finally, the blue lines of the sigil itself began to glow.

That was the last thing Molly saw before his vision went black.

As his sight returned, he blinked until the scene cleared, and he realized he was lying at the bottom of an open grave. The sky above was a flat gray that suggested a snowstorm on its way. At the edge of the grave, a black tabaxi knelt while wiping tears from the fur on her cheeks. “Anything else you want to say?” a voice asked from outside Molly’s limited range of vision.

The tabaxi shook her head. “No. Just… goodbye, Lucien.”

Someone whose face Molly couldn’t see began shoveling dirt into the grave. Molly tried to scream out to them, to beg them not to bury him alive, but he couldn’t speak or move. The dirt piled up, filling his mouth and eyes and everything was black again and—

And he was back in the laboratory, gasping for breath as a sickly blue glow surrounded him.

His heart skipped a beat as he saw Caleb sitting just a few feet in front of him, his pallor exaggerated by the blue uplighting, with his eyes wide open and unblinking, staring straight ahead into Molly’s.

“Caleb?” Molly croaked. He could still taste the soft earth in the back of his throat. “Caleb, what the fuck?” He waved his hands around and wiggled in his seat, but Caleb’s eyes remained unblinking and unmoving.

Molly may not have known a damn thing about magic, but he could tell something was seriously wrong.

 

——————

 

Caleb’s home was on fire. He was standing on the high hill across the dirt road that passed in front of his family’s farm, looking down on the little building. As a child, he’d loved rolling down the hill in the summertime and sledding down it on woven mats with his friends in the wintertime. Now, he was stoically standing atop it, staring down as his home burned.

He could hear screaming from inside. It was his mother, he realized. His mother was screaming his father’s name, and there was no response.

“Herr Ikithon,” he said softly, glancing at his mentor standing at his side.

“Yes?”

“That’s my mom.”

“No, that is a traitor.”

Caleb looked back at the ever-growing flames. The screams became more desperate and incoherent.

“ _ Nein _ ,” he muttered under his breath. He could still feel the heat on his palms where the flames had burst from him. “ _ Nein _ .” This was all wrong, it was wrong, he had set his house on fire, he was burning his parents alive—

“ _ Nein,  _ that is my mother, Herr Ikithon, my mother!” he began screaming, falling to his knees in the dewy grass. “ _ Meine Mutter, meine Mutter, _ ” he sobbed, “she is dying in there, I need to, I need to save her, there is still time, I can hear her—”

Part of the roof collapsed, sending sparks shooting up into the clear, starry night.

The screaming stopped.

“No, no,  _ neinneinnein _ !” He scrambled to his feet and began running at the house, but Herr Ikithon grabbed him by the back of the robes.

“No, Caleb. They were traitors to the empire. This is what they deserve.”

He struggled against Trent’s grasp on him. “ _ Nein _ , get off me, I need to save them!”

“It’s too late, boy.”

A wall of the house fell inward, and Caleb fell back to his knees with it.

“Caleb!”

He looked up at Herr Ikithon, but there was no indication that he’d said anything. “ _ Caleb _ !” The voice grew more insistent, and the accent was all wrong, it couldn’t be Herr Ikithon. “Please, Caleb, if you’re in there, come back, you’re freaking me the fuck out—”

Mollymauk. 

He wasn’t watching his home burn; he was casting a spell in a laboratory in Rexxentrum. He had to tell himself this several times before that reality replaced the visions in his head.

As he returned to the present moment, he saw Molly’s face up close to his, deep worry lines creasing his brow. 

“Oh, thank the gods,” Molly stress-laughed, collapsing back. “I was worried you’d been, I don’t know, lost to the ether or something.”

Caleb didn’t reply. He was trying to parse together what he’d just experienced. That wasn’t how his parents had died. He hadn’t been there. He’d gotten news of the tragedy at the Soltryce Academy, then Trent had taken him back to the site to bury his parents’ bones and find closure. Right?

The emotions he’d experienced during whatever that vision was, they’d felt so real, so unlike the fragile unreality of dreams. He could taste the rawness in his throat from his screaming and sobbing, the overwhelming, indescribable horror as the weight of what he’d done sunk in—

Molly’s hand was on his cheek, forcing him to look him in the eyes. “Talk to me, Caleb. Please.”

All Caleb could croak was, “Mollymauk?”

Molly kissed Caleb’s forehead before sitting back again. “Yeah. That was a hell of a spell you just cast. Are you okay?”

Caleb still didn’t move, and he was pretty sure he wasn’t blinking enough. He felt somehow hollow and full of twisting, writhing horror at the same time, like his guts had been replaced with worms.

He finally looked up and met Molly’s gaze. “Mollymauk. I think I might have murdered my parents.”

Molly stared at Caleb in horrified disbelief for several long moments. “You… you what? How… you  _ think _ ? What are you talking about?”

Caleb didn’t reply. He stared off into the open space above Molly’s head, the image of a burning building seared into his eyes.

Then wave after wave of magically-repressed anguish and guilt bubbled up inside him, brought to light for the first time in a decade and a half. He wrapped his arms tight around his chest and began sobbing, harder than he’d cried in living memory. He curled in on himself and brought his knees up, rocking in place as he sobbed like a child. “I killed them,” he choked through his tears. “Molly, I—” He couldn’t say it aloud again. He couldn’t let anyone else know this terrible thing, this awful reality that had been hidden away behind an arcane barrier in his mind. 

He was vaguely aware of Molly’s arms wrapping around him. He was too distraught to even push him away, so he allowed himself to be pulled into a tight embrace.

“It’s okay,” Molly murmured into his hair, shushing him gently.

Caleb sobbed until he had no tears left, then he stared in silent stillness at the rain pouring outside the windows. Finally, he disentangled himself from Molly and stood. “Come with me. We need to talk somewhere private.” His voice was ragged and low, but Molly seemed to hear him fine. He hopped to his feet and followed Caleb out the laboratory door.

 

———————

 

All thoughts of being buried alive had left Molly’s mind by the time he was climbing a spiral staircase behind Caleb. Narrow windows lit the stairs in periodic slashes of gray stormy light, and Molly doubted Caleb could see very well with his human vision, but he must have known every step by memory, as he never stumbled or misstepped.

They went higher and higher until Molly’s thighs were burning and he was starting to get queasy from the height. They passed several landings that he hoped were theirs, but they kept going until nearly the top of the tower. Caleb wordlessly opened the wooden door and led him down a hallway of more doors, about halfway to the end.

Caleb glanced around frantically before opening the last door and ushering Molly in quickly. He followed close behind and pulled the door shut, locking it immediately before running over to a nearby cabinet, removing a length of silver thread, and hanging it across the doorway while chanting under his breath.

Molly took in the sitting room of Caleb’s quarters while he worked. It was pretty much what he would have expected— sparse, clean, and full of books, with a couch pulled close enough to the hearth for reading by firelight.

He invited himself to sit down on the couch until Caleb finished whatever spell he was casting and joined him silently.

“So,” Molly said after a beat. “Can you tell me what’s going on? What was that spell you cast? I had some sort of vision…”

Caleb nodded along with his words. “ _ Ja _ , that was supposed to happen to  _ you _ . It was a ritual for unlocking lost memories.”

Anger bubbled up in Molly’s chest, both at himself and Caleb. He should have demanded details on exactly what Caleb was casting before he let it happen, but at the same time, Caleb knew he didn’t want to remember his past life and shouldn’t have been casting that spell to begin with.

But he knew anger wouldn’t solve anything at this point, not with Caleb in such a frighteningly fragile state already. 

“And it didn’t go as planned?” Molly prompted as gently as he could.

Caleb shook his head slowly. He was staring blankly into the cold hearth. “It was a powerful spell, and I’d never used it before. It was stupid of me to try, but it was the only thing I could think of. It must have… I’m not sure. Backfired, or something.”

For a long while, the two sat in silence except for the sound of the driving rain against the windows. Molly thought back on what he’d seen in his vision, or memory, or whatever it had been. He concentrated on the tabaxi’s face, trying to commit it to memory. Her words echoed in his mind—  _ goodbye, Lucien _ . That must have been his old name, right? 

He hated it. He was Mollymauk Tealeaf, and that was the end of that. Lucien was dead and gone, whoever he’d been. 

Finally he could stand the silence no longer. He asked softly, “Caleb, do you want to talk about what you saw?”

Caleb started at his words; he must have been deep in thought. “What? Oh, I… I do not want to, no.”

“Look, I won’t make you if you don’t wanna, but it might be good to get it out in the open.”

Caleb continued staring into the cold hearth. “Trent was there,” he finally said.

“As in, Trent Ikithon? The Archmage?”

“ _ Ja _ . He is my mentor. He has been since I was a child. All these years, I’ve trusted him. He and Astrid and Wulfie became my family when I first went to the Academy, and they have been ever since. But it was all a lie. He watched me murder my family, my  _ real  _ family. I think he may have made me do it.”

Caleb seemed to be talking to himself more so than Molly. His voice was quiet and ragged, and he didn’t look away from the hearth the whole time.

Molly was, for once, speechless. He hated seeing Caleb like this and wanted to make him feel better, but what words could possibly ease this pain?

“Is there anything I can do to help?” he eventually asked, his voice sounding weak even to his own ears. 

Caleb opened his mouth like he was going to speak, then went silent and shook his head. 

“Are you sure?”

Caleb seemed to be struggling with… well, probably innumerable things right now, including forming a response to Molly. Finally, in the voice of someone unused to asking for help, he murmured, “Can you stay with me tonight? Not like— not like  _ that.  _ Just here. I’m afraid what I’ll do if I’m alone tonight.”

Molly could tell that each word was a struggle for Caleb to get out.

“Yeah, of course,” Molly said. “Tonight’s my night off anyway, and this is a perfectly comfortable couch.”

Truth be told, he was glad he didn’t have to go back home tonight. Yasha was the only person he’d be comfortable telling about his experiences today, and it was always hard to find a private moment in the crowded, shared living space of the House. He’d have to return eventually, of course, but one night out wouldn’t raise any alarms with the troupe. In fact, they were probably getting more concerned about how long it had been since he’d had one. 

Caleb nodded slowly. “Um,  _ danke schön.  _ Thank you. I will get you blankets.” He rushed off into what Molly guessed was his bedroom to do so. Sure enough, he re-emerged laden down with an armful of linens and a large knitted blanket. 

“Thanks,” Molly said, piling them at one end of the couch, as it was still only the afternoon.

Talking and moving seemed to be having a positive effect on Caleb. He still looked exhausted, like he’d aged a decade in the past hours, but he was no longer staring blankly at nothing. Molly counted that as a small victory. 

 

——————

 

Caleb felt wrong. He felt nothing and everything all at once. He was a murderer and a victim, a prodigy and failure, a powerful wizard and a traumatized child. He felt disconnected from the vision, his memory, his own body here and now, and yet he’d never experienced such an intense onslaught of emotions before. It was too much yet it was empty nothingness and it made him want to curl up and die, or maybe scream and rage and burn Trent Ikithon to a fucking cinder. 

No, he couldn’t do that last one. No more burning, he couldn’t witness that again without breaking completely. 

Molly was arranging the sheets at the end of the couch. If Caleb hadn’t been such a coward, he would have asked Molly to stay in his bed with him tonight. Not for sex, that was the farthest thing from his mind right now. Just to have another warm body near him, holding him, reminding him that he was here and alive and this all was happening for real and he wasn’t alone. 

But he was alone. He was a murderer who deserved to be alone, not to have the comfort of someone bright and shining and pure like Molly. 

Molly was talking to him, he realized. He might have been for a few moments now, Caleb wasn’t sure. 

“Hm?” he grunted, looking down at Molly on the couch. 

“I was saying, come here and sit with me. Please. If you’re okay with it,” Molly repeated. He patted at the space next to him on the cushion. 

Caleb sat down hesitantly, and Molly placed a hand between his shoulder blades, rubbing in small, comforting circles. 

“So, today's been… a pretty shit day, to say the least,” Molly laughed humorlessly. “Would you, um… well, physical contact really helps me when I’m freaking out like this. Would it be okay if we just kind of cuddled? Just, you know, platonically.”

For a split second, Caleb was distracted from the chaos in his mind by the simple surprise of Molly being so nervous to ask for some innocent cuddling when he normally was so effortless in his sexually-charged flirtations.

“I don’t know how to do that,” Caleb confessed.

“Just lie back on the pillows.”

Caleb’s body was working faster than his overloaded brain, and it chose to settle back against the small collection of pillows. Molly scooted forward and curled up against his chest, careful of his horns. “Is this okay?” he asked. 

“ _ Ja,”  _ Caleb replied. Molly’s weight on top of him was comforting and gave him something to focus on that wasn’t his own thoughts. He counted Molly’s slow even breaths, one at a time.  _ Ein. Zwei. Drei.  _ The sound of terrified screams cutting through the once-calm night.  _ Seiben. Acht. Neun.  _ Wet grass on his knees while sparks shot up into the stars.  _ Dreizehn. Vierzhen. Fünfzhen.  _ Soft violet curls under his fingers as he stroked the back of Molly’s neck.  _ Neunzhen. Zwanzig. Einundzwanzig.  _

He was so tired, so impossibly fucking exhausted. His eyes felt too dry after all the tears and he ached with a bone-deep tiredness that had nothing to do with physical exertion.

He was going to find answers. He was going to seek the truth. He was going to kill Trent Ikithon with his godsdamned bare hands if he had to.

Caleb didn’t dream when he fell into the grips of sleep. His mind was already far too full. 


	7. The Escape Plan

Everything was soft and warm and nice. Caleb could hear a little bit of rain still pattering against the window, nothing like the storms of yesterday. A warm weight rested on him. How long had it been since he’d woken up with someone else? It was a good feeling. He squinted his eyes open and looked down at the mess of purple curls and shiny jewelry on his chest. He was so damn lucky to have someone as beautiful as Mollymauk here so close to him. 

He sighed contentedly and closed his eyes again. 

Fire roared in the darkness behind his eyes. 

He sat upright with a cry, accidentally knocking Molly off his chest. Molly grumbled sleepily as Caleb scurried out from under him and began frantically pacing the room. 

“Yesterday. The spell. Your memories. Mine. That really happened?” he demanded. 

Molly groaned and rubbed at his eyes. “What?” he croaked. It took him a second to process Caleb’s question so soon after being startled awake. “Oh. Yeah. That happened.”

They remained silent for a moment as their memories of yesterday resurfaced.

Molly was the first to speak. “This changes everything, doesn’t it?” He sat on the edge of the couch with his head hung, rubbing at the back of his neck. 

“ _ Ja _ . Everything,” Caleb murmured. Then his eyes widened as he gasped, “Astrid and Eodwulf! I wonder… if Trent has modified my memory, they may have been subjected to the same.”

With that, he bolted out the door, leaving Molly in a daze. 

Astrid and Wulfie’s quarters weren’t far from his. He first came to Astrid’s and knocked frantically on the door. “Astrid! Astrid, are you awake?”

A few moments later, a tired-looking, pajama-clad Astrid creaked the door open. “The fuck, Caleb?” she groaned. “It’s barely past sunrise. What are you doing?”

“I’m sorry, but this is important. Really, life-shatteringly important. Come with me, we need to get Wulfie!”

A mix of irritation and concern crossed her normally cheerful features. “Fine. Okay. Can I at least get dressed?”

Caleb was already hurtling down the hall towards Eodwulf’s room. “There’s no time!” he called over his shoulder. 

He raced around a few corners until he found the right door. Astrid followed him and caught up just as Wulfie opened the door. 

“This better be a matter of life and death,” Eodwulf growled. “I was up past midnight working on Trent’s project.”

“It is!” Caleb exclaimed, grabbing one of his hands and pulling him into the hallway. “Come with me.”

He led them back to his quarters, shoved them into the room, and locked the door behind them with every mundane and arcane mechanism he had available. 

“Hi guys,” Molly waved from the couch. 

Astrid and Eodwulf looked at each other in dismay. Finally, Wulf said, “Caleb, why are you acting so paranoid, and why is there a whore in your room?”

“Don’t be fucking rude,” Molly said. 

“It’s not— it’s not what it looks like. Sit down. We need to talk.” Caleb paced over near the hearth while Astrid and Eodwulf awkwardly sat next to Molly. 

“Looks like both our plans worked, I guess,” Astrid laughed to Wulfie after a second. 

“ _ Ja _ , I guess so,” he said, frowning. 

“Plans?” Caleb demanded. “What plans?”

Wulfie reclined on the couch. “Astrid and I wanted to help bring back a bit of the old Caleb. I thought we should get you a solo project so you could spread your nerdy wings and make some new discoveries, and Astrid thought we should just help you get laid. But apparently you’ve killed two birds with one stone.”

Caleb scowled. “What? No, Molly slept on the couch— wait. Wulfie, the solo project was  _ your  _ idea?”

“ _ Ja.  _ I told Trent about your test subject and suggested he make it your full-time assignment.”

“Huh.” Caleb wasn’t sure how to feel about that.

“But that’s all irrelevant right now,” Astrid said. “Why did you wake us up at the asscrack of dawn, and why’s Mollymauk here?”

“Right.” His heart beat faster and his palms began to sweat. How could he even broach this subject with them?

He decided to start at the beginning. “So. Yesterday, I decided to try a spell to unlock some memories that I believed Molly had buried within his subconscious. But it… well, I fucked it up and things went, um,  _ very  _ wrong.”

 

—————

 

Molly listened in concern as Caleb walked Astrid and Eodwulf through the events of the spell, its backfiring, and his flashback. He didn’t cry or tremble or break down at all this time. Molly wasn’t sure if that was progress, or terrifying. 

By the end of it, Astrid was covering her mouth in horror with tears brimming in her eyes. Eodwulf was leaned in intently, a deep crease of worry between his brows. 

They sat in silence until Eodwulf sighed, “ _ Scheiße, _ Caleb. I— I don’t even know what to say.”

Astrid said, “That vision you had. It can’t be real, can it? It had to have been some sort of, I don’t know, some side effect of the spell going wrong,  _ ja _ ?”

Caleb shook his head. “It was real. I know it. I can feel it.”

Astrid's shoulders shook, and Eodwulf rubbed comforting circles in her upper back. “It’s okay,” he murmured to her, then turned back to Caleb. “We’ll figure this out, okay? It’s a lot to take in, but you know as much as anyone, every question has an answer. We’ll help you find yours.”

Molly was a good bullshitter. He knew people. He knew how to say what they wanted to hear and put on a good show to get exactly what he wanted from them. And he knew how to recognize when others were doing the same. 

Astrid’s sobs were fake and Eodwulf’s promises were empty and Caleb was nodding along with them and thanking them for their understanding and eating up every lie they fed him.

Molly, for once, kept his mouth shut. He’d stopped paying attention to the conversation and was lost in his own thoughts. 

Astrid and Eodwulf knew something about Caleb’s past that they weren’t letting on. They also knew that Caleb had uncovered at least a part of this information yesterday, and that he’d told Molly everything. And, if they were lying about everything to their best friend’s face, maybe had been for years, then they must have been fiercely loyal to this Trent Ikithon. 

Molly didn’t like where this was going. He was now involved in something so much bigger than he had ever anticipated when he’d wandered up the front steps of the Assembly mere days ago. Something that could destroy the Cerberus Assembly if it got out, or destroy Caleb if it didn’t. And two Assembly loyalists knew that he knew everything. 

Caleb was saying goodbye to his friends, telling them to stay safe, reminding them not to share this information with anyone as he closed the door. 

Molly would have bet his last coppers that they were going straight to Trent Ikithon.

“We need to get out of here,” Molly muttered, half to himself. 

“What?” Caleb asked. He’d clearly been in deep thought after Astrid and Eodwulf left. 

“We’re not safe here. The knowledge we have, about what Trent did to you. It’s dangerous. He won’t want it getting out, and if he was willing to make you kill your parents for… for  _ any _ reason, I promise you he’d be willing to do just about anything to keep his secrets hidden.”

“He won’t find out,” Caleb said. “Astrid and Wulfie will help me find answers, and we’ll work out a plan, and we’ll figure out exactly what's going on here.”

Molly could already tell that Caleb was going to be near-impossible to sway. 

He continued, “We need to carry on as if nothing’s wrong. We’ll keep doing our meetings each day, and I’ll work with Astrid and Wulfie at night. You won’t be involved at all.”

“But I know about what Trent made you do. Your friends know that I know. I’m fucking involved whether I want to be or not!” He hadn’t meant to shout at the end, and Caleb flinched away and averted his gaze. 

“I am sorry for that. I shouldn’t have gotten you involved. Now that you know what I did, you must never want to see me again. I will not stop you if you want to leave.” Caleb stared at the patterns of the rug under his feet as he spoke. 

“I’m not leaving,” Molly said before his brain could stop him. “Like I said, I’m involved. I can’t walk away from this.”

Caleb still wouldn’t meet his gaze. “I've fucked everything up. My whole life and yours.”

Molly wanted to say something to comfort Caleb, but he could think of nothing. Everything that Caleb had just said was true. 

“Here’s what we’ll do. We pretend everything is normal and fine while we get a plan together. Then we either get the hell out of here, expose Trent for what he really is, or… or whatever we end up coming up with.” Molly began pacing around the sitting room while Caleb stood by the door. 

“Okay.  _ Ja,  _ okay,” Caleb eventually nodded. “That’s good. We need some time and acting like nothing’s wrong will give us that.”

They gathered themselves and headed down towards the laboratory. Caleb didn’t speak the whole time, so Molly didn’t initiate conversation. They reached the lab, sat on their stools, and realized how impossible it was going to be to act like everything was fine. 

 

——————

 

The spell circle stared at Caleb like the eye of some ancient beast. 

Its dull blue lines taunted him, reminded him of what transpired yesterday. Of what he’d remembered, what he’d done. 

He could still hear his mother screaming in the silence. His memory would never let him forget that sound. In the back of his mind, he knew he and Molly were supposed to be making plans, but he couldn’t speak, couldn’t think of anything besides his burning home, his dying parents turning to ash because of him. 

Molly was touching his shoulder and talking to him but he couldn’t process his words. 

He’d been so caught up in how he was going to get out of this situation that he hadn’t considered if he should. He was a murderer, and of his own family at that. Why did he deserve a chance to escape the Academy when his parents never got a chance to escape their home? 

Maybe he deserved whatever retribution was coming his way. Maybe Herr Ikithon would just wipe his mind again and he would forget the past week and everything could go back to normal. 

But he knew they wouldn’t be so kind to Mollymauk.

“We need to get out of here, but in a way that won’t raise suspicion, so we aren’t followed,” Caleb said, speaking as quickly as his thoughts came to him. “We need some sort of cover story, some reason why we both need to leave.”

Molly started at the sudden statement, but was soon nodding along. “Yeah, I agree. Is there some reason we could make up for your investigation into my abilities taking us out of the Academy for a while?”

Caleb considered it. “Maybe. I don’t know. I could definitely come up with something that could cover us for an afternoon or so, but probably not for even an overnight outing.”

Molly frowned. “Will people really be that suspicious if you’re gone for one night? Do you  _ ever  _ leave this place?”

“I have little reason to leave,” Caleb said. “Sometimes I’ll go get a nice meal with Astrid and Wulfie, or buy new robes, or visit my favorite bakery for some Zemnian treats, but for the most part, everything’s here. My quarters, my friends, my work, the library, Trent. I don’t need to leave unless I want to treat myself to frivolous things. Why are you looking at me like that, Mollymauk?”

Molly’s face was a furrowed mix of pity and horror. “Caleb, this is a fucking cult,” he murmured.

“Of course it’s not!” Caleb protested. Then he grabbed Molly by the sides of the face and leaned in close to him. “Wait. A cult. Mollymauk, you’re a genius!”

He leapt up and raced out of the room, away from Molly’s cries of confusion. 

He arrived in the kitchens at the peak of the breakfast rush. The staff were bustling around the crowded room and he had to dodge several people carrying hot pans and large pots of food, earning him several disgruntled comments and orders to please exit the kitchen. “Cali!” he shouted over the din, ignoring everything else. “Calianna!”

Cali emerged from a walk-in pantry with a basket of herbs on one arm. “Mister Caleb!” she exclaimed. “What’re you doing? It’s actually breakfast time, you don’t need to sneak a meal.”

“This isn’t about food,” he said, holding her by the shoulders and leaning down to her height. “I need to talk to you. Come with me.”

She looked around bewilderedly. “I’m sorry sir, it’s the middle of a meal, I could get in trouble—”

“If anyone questions you, tell them that you were obeying a direct command from Arcanist Widogast. I outrank every one of your superiors down here; they will not question you.”

“Well, okay,” Cali squeaked. “If it’s that important.”

“It is.”

She set down her basket and followed him out of the kitchens and up the stairs towards the ground floor. 

 

———————

 

Molly waited in a bewildered silence until Caleb burst back into the laboratory, trailed by Cali, the chipper dragon-scaled girl from the kitchens.

Caleb pulled up a stool for her and they gathered in a circle. “Okay,” he began. “Cali, I’m hoping you’ll be able to help me in my project with Mollymauk. You see, before he came to Rexxentrum, he was involved in a cult much like you were before you escaped. I was hoping you would be willing to share some details about that escape so I could compare your experiences to Molly’s and expand my sample size.”

Cali frowned as she listened to him, and Molly worried for a second that she would see through his haphazard lie. But when he was done she shrugged and said, “Um, I guess so. You wanted to know about my escape?”

“ _ Ja _ , please, if you would.”

“Well, I ran away.”

“You ran away. What do you mean by that?”

She shrugged again. “Just what it sounds like, Mister Caleb. Once I realized that the Caustic Heart was a terrible place full of evil people, I packed up my bags and ran away one night. I didn’t stop running ‘til I got to this city, and only then ‘cause I found a job here, where I’m surrounded by powerful mages that the cult can’t get through.”

Molly interjected, “So you feel safe here?”

She looked up at him with big eyes, one green and human, the other reptilian yellow. “Oh yes, everyone likes food so they treat us kitchen folks well enough. I have a nice room and lots of friends and I know the mages won’t let evil cultists get to me.” She perked up a bit and added, “Oh, if you’re nervous about your old cult finding you, you could probably find a job here in the Assembly or the Soltryce Academy! They’d keep you safe like they do for me.”

Molly forced a smiled and nodded at her. He couldn’t bring himself to speak, to lie to this sweet, helpful girl. He already felt uncomfortable enough that Caleb had brought her here. A servant couldn’t really disobey a high-ranking Arcanist, and he was having her spill personal details about her involvement with some sort of awful cult that was hunting her down. Molly hated it, and the ease and enthusiasm with which Caleb had run down to fetch her sent a little shiver of nerves down Molly’s spine. Caleb was a victim of Trent Ikithon, of course, but that didn’t mean he hadn’t learned a manipulative trick or two from him while his memory was modified.

Caleb was saying goodbye to Cali and Molly watched them without really hearing anything. He and Caleb had to get out of this place. 

“Well, that wasn’t as helpful as I had hoped,” Caleb sighed as he returned to his seat. 

“It was, though,” Molly said. “She told us what we need to do.”

“Mollymauk, we can’t just run away from this place.”

“And why not?”

Caleb blinked and considered the question. He didn’t respond. 

Molly insisted, “Give me one good reason, other than that you’re scared, why we can’t pack up and leave today.”

Caleb’s face hardened. “I am not scared.”

“Good,” Molly laughed. “Then get your shit and let’s get out of here.”

“My whole life is here,” he said, barely a whisper. 

Molly leaned forward into Caleb’s space. “I know a thing or two about walking away from a life. And besides, if you stay, that life might not be much longer.”

Instead of addressing what Molly had just said, Caleb asked, “You’re leaving no matter what I do, aren’t you?”

Molly nodded. “By nightfall, I’m going to be outside the city with Yasha at my side. I hope you’ll be there too. I truly do.” He hadn’t realized how true those words were until he spoke them. He and Caleb hadn’t known each other long, but they’d been through some serious shit together in that short time, the kind of experiences that brought people together. 

Molly mentally shoved aside all thoughts about how attached he was to Caleb. There would be time to sort through that later. Now was a time for action. “Meet me outside the south gate of the city at sundown. If it gets dark and you’re not there, we’re leaving without you.” Then his voice softened a bit and he added, “Please be there, okay?”

Caleb nodded. “I… I will try.”

Molly leaned in and kissed Caleb’s scratchy cheek, the kind of quick friendly kiss he and his circus family shared all the time. Caleb absently touched the spot with his fingertips and blinked in surprise. 

“See you at sunset, Caleb,” Molly said. 

He got up and left the room as quickly as he could without raising suspicion from anyone in the halls.

 

——————

 

Caleb leaned back on his stool and groaned. This was a nightmare. This was possibly the worst thing he could imagine. Yesterday morning he had been a promising Arcanist on a path to success with the Assembly, or even teaching at the Soltryce Academy. Today, he was a murderer on the run from the only home he’d had since he was a child.

He was about to leave the lab when he noticed a rustle of movement behind a stack of books in the corner. He approached it slowly, a mix of fear and anger in his gut. He already knew what he was going to find before the owl burst out from behind the books. 

It didn’t have much room to spread its tawny wings, so Caleb just barely managed to grab it and pin it to the closest desk with one hand. It shrieked and cawed in animistic fear, and Caleb normally would have felt immeasurable guilt about hurting an animal like this, but this creature was no true owl. 

Its eyes flashed bright white-blue for a second as Caleb leaned in close, avoiding its thrashing talons, and snarled, “Fuck you, Eodwulf.”

He pulled his component dagger from the sheath on his belt and stabbed it into the bird’s forehead. There wasn’t even any blood before Moonfeather dissipated into sparks that faded into nothingness.

Eodwulf has betrayed him. He had no family left, nothing to tie him to this place. It was a terrifying, gut-wrenching, freeing realization. 

He resheathed the dagger and raced out of the lab, up towards his quarters. Eodwulf, and surely Astrid and Trent as well, now knew his plans with Molly, when and where they were going to meet. He had to find a way to get to Molly and stop him from walking right into an ambush. 

He was half surprised that no one was waiting to attack him in his room. He dug a rarely-used leather haversack from his closet and began throwing in what little supplies he had that would be useful on the road— paper and ink, bottles and bags of components, the blanket he’d given Molly last night, an empty canteen for water, a map of Wildemount. 

He pulled off his fine blue robes and tore into his dresser, searching frantically for the few travel clothes he had. By the time he was done, he was virtually unrecognizable— his clothes were all tattered and brown, covered with a leather overcoat and gray scarf that had both become motheaten in the years since he’d last worn them.

He shrugged on the haversack and took one last look around his quarters before pulling the door closed. 

Standing in the hall, his heart rate quickened. He was throwing away his whole life to run away with a near-stranger. But then again, Molly had been right. He had nothing left here. It had all been a lie this whole time, and he was just now realizing it. 

He adjusted his heavy pack and made his way down the stairs, towards the back doors of the Academy. 

He was stopped in the back hallway by a new initiate he’d spoken to at the party a few weeks back. She had on a friendly smile and asked, “Oh, are you heading out for some field research, Doctor Widogast?”

“ _ Ja _ !” Caleb agreed instinctively as he forced a smile. It was as good a cover as any. 

“That’s so cool, I’d love to do that kind of research some day! You’re specialized in transmutation, right? I’d—“

“I’m sorry, but I’m actually late for, uh… my caravan,” Caleb fumbled as he pushed past her and continued out the back doors. 

He remembered being that bright and eager, so excited to have finally graduated from the Soltryce Academy and found his place within the Assembly. It had felt like coming home, the first time he’d walked into the plant-filled front hall as an initiate. 

He burst out into the back courtyard and let his feet guide him out into the city proper. Now came the issue of finding Mollymauk. His best chance had to be that dance hall where Molly worked. He racked his brain for a moment before hearing Oremid Hass’s voice boom out in the back of his mind, “...the talented dancers of The Fletching and Moondrop Private House of Curiosities!”

He had no idea where that establishment was, but he knew it wouldn’t be here amongst the academic and governmental buildings of the central district. 

He began making his way towards the nearest market district. It was still drizzling a bit, but the storm was gone and it was nothing his heavy coat couldn’t keep at bay. 

As the grandiose stone buildings of the central district gave way to smaller structures and plazas of market stalls, Caleb began brainstorming ways of finding this location quickly without a map. He came up with precisely one idea. 

“ _ Hallo,  _ sir!” he said to the first passerby by saw, in the most cheerful tone he could force himself into. “May I—"

“I haven’t got any coin,” the man grumbled, not even pausing to listen or look at him. 

Caleb watched him go in dismay before approaching another market-goer.

Apparently the people of Rexxentrum did not take well to a frantic, scruffy, shabbily dressed stranger coming up to them on the street in the rain. He must have stopped nearly a dozen people before someone would even listen to them, and they had never even heard of the place.

Caleb could quite literally count the minutes ticking away. With every passing second Molly was getting closer to leaving for the south gate, right into whatever ambush Trent had planned for them.

It took nearly an hour for someone to give him anything useful, and it happened when he was hiding from the rain under the overhang of a tavern roof. 

A man, slightly rough-looking and middle aged, stopped near him under the dry overhang to light a cigarette, but his tinderbox must have gotten wet in the rain and wasn’t working. 

“Here, I can help,” Caleb said, extending his hand. The man frowned at him suspiciously but held out the cigarette. 

Caleb snapped his fingers and the end lit up. 

“Shit, that’s a nice trick,” the man laughed. “Thanks. You want one?” He began fishing in his coat pocket. 

“No,  _ danke _ , I do not smoke,” Caleb said. “Actually, I could use your help, though. Later tonight, I’m supposed to be meeting some friends at The Fletching and Moondrop Private House of Curiosities, but I’m not quite sure where that is. Do you happen to know?”

The man put his tin of cigarettes back in his pocket. “Yeah, I heard o’ the place. Never been myself, it’s damn pricy. Up on Highmarket, I think, with all the fancy jewelry stores and shit.”

“ _ Danke schön _ !” Caleb exclaimed, and had to force himself not to suspiciously race off into the downpour. He and the stranger waited in awkward silence for a few more minutes until the rain slowed again, and Caleb hurried off for Highmarket Street. He’d actually been to that area several times, when he needed rare gemstones or other expensive components for his spells. 

It was hard to discern the time of day through the heavy cover of clouds, but Caleb knew it was about four in the afternoon when he found himself outside a fine, dark wood building with an elaborately painted sign proclaiming it to be The Fletching and Moondrop Private House of Curiosities. 

The door was unsurprisingly locked.

He began pounding on the door, calling in, “Mollymauk, we need to speak!”

A gruff, unfamiliar voice shouted through the door, “We’re closed!”

Caleb huffed and yelled back, “I know! I’m not a patron, I’m a friend of Mollymauk’s! I need to see him!”

The door creaked part-way open and a burly half-orc with a carefully styled handlebar mustache peeked out, scowling. “It’s been a while since one of Molly’s fans has tried to bother him off the clock. Now fuck off before I show you why they call me Bo the Breaker.” He began closing the door, but Caleb stuck his foot into the jamb before it could shut all the way.

“I’m not some crazy fan. I’m begging you,  _ bitte,  _ please just tell Molly that Caleb needs to speak to him.”

The door slammed shut the second Caleb stepped back.

He kicked the ground and swore under his breath in frustration, but then he heard Bo through the door yelling, “Hey Molly, some guy named Caleb wants to see you. Do you know him or should I make sure he stays away?”

A few moments later, the door flew open and Molly greeted him, dressed in his favorite colorful coat and leggings, but with none of the usual jewelry in his horns. He grabbed Caleb by the scarf and pulled him into the building, slamming the door behind him. “Follow me,” he ordered without letting go of Caleb’s scarf.

Bo called after them, “Who is this guy? And why are you taking him up to our room?”

Molly laughed over his shoulder, “Because we’re going to have messy sex all over your bed and not clean up after ourselves!”

Caleb couldn’t make out Bo’s retort as they ascended a rickety wooden staircase to an upper landing with an open door leading to another staircase. Molly stopped him on the landing and hissed, “What are you doing here? We had a plan!”

“I know, and Eodwulf overheard our plan.” Seeing Molly’s confused look, he snapped his fingers and Frumpkin appeared on his shoulder. “Wulf has a familiar too. It usually takes the form of a barn owl. I found it hiding in the lab after you left. After we discussed our whole plan in detail.”

“Fuck.” Molly dragged his hands down over his face. “Fuckfuckfuck. Okay. So they know we’re leaving. We definitely can’t go to the south gate, then. Maybe the west? It’s kind of in the slums, should be less guarded than the north or west.”

“ _ Ja _ , sure. Might as well. And they’re expecting us at sundown, so the faster we get out of here, the bigger head start we’ll have against them if they decide to give chase.”

“Yeah. Come with me.” Molly led him up the second staircase into some sort of attic room with rows of beds divided by curtains hanging from the rafters.

“You all sleep here?” Caleb wondered aloud.

“Yeah,” Molly grimaced. “We’re not all successful Arcanists with big suites all to ourselves.”

“Isn’t that difficult, in your line of work?”

They’d reached Molly’s makeshift room, and the tiefling stopped halfway through pulling a plain black coat over his conspicuous outfit. A large, pale woman with long black hair reclined on the bed across from Molly’s, watching them with crossed arms and a dark expression on her face. 

“Caleb, you do realize I’m not  _ actually  _ a prostitute, right? I’m a strictly hands-off entertainer.”

Caleb actually hadn’t realized this, not that he’d thought too much of it either way.

Molly chuckled wryly at his silence. “Well, at least you didn’t try to fucking proposition me or anything.”

The woman stood up from her bed and slung a bag over her shoulder. “So we’re leaving now? We should go before everyone else is done with rehearsal.”

Molly looked around his small space uncertainty. “You never were a sentimental one, Yasha darling.”

Yasha shrugged. “This place was good while it lasted. Now it’s time to move on.”

Molly brushed his fingers over the detailed embroidery of a blue and silver Bahamut tapestry hanging on his wall. “You’re right,” he muttered. “Let’s go.”

He shouldered his bag and adjusted his coat, leading Caleb and Yasha back down the stairs. 

He carefully peeked around the corner when they reached the ground floor, making sure he knew where Bo was. 

Caleb couldn’t see what Molly was observing, but after a moment, he waved a purple hand and began quickly and quietly moving towards the back door. It was open and they were halfway out before Bo called, “Hey guys! Where’re you off to?”

Caleb instinctively froze at the shout, before he even had time to process its friendly tone. Yasha kept moving and ran into him, and they piled up in the doorframe. 

Bo’s voice grew more serious as he asked, “Yash, what’s with the bag and the sword? Is everything okay?”

Molly replied from outside, “Yep, everything’s fine! See you tonight, Bo!”

The three of them raced out into the drizzling rain and Yasha slammed the door behind them. They hurried down the back alley behind the House and ducked around a corner between buildings leading towards the main road just as they heard the door open and Bo start calling after them, the worry evident in his voice even at this distance.

They slowed their pace to avoid suspicion and began heading west on Highmarket.

“Well,” Molly laughed a bit manically, “I guess we’re officially fugitives now.”

 


	8. Runaways

The rain had stopped by the time they reached the west gate, but the clouds still cast the evening in dim gray light. Caleb wasn’t thinking right now; he couldn’t. His mind was working on pure energy and adrenaline, and his only thought was to get out of this city as fast as possible. 

They got fewer and fewer suspicious looks as the got nearer to the west gate, and as they were approaching it, they hardly stood out in the crowds. 

“So, do we just walk right on through?” Molly asked, looking between the pair of guards on either side of the gate. 

“ _ Ja _ ,” Caleb said. “If we’re stopped, let me talk to them.”

The others nodded and they made a beeline for the gate, with their heads down to avoid eye contact with the guards. 

Caleb almost thought they were free without a hitch until one of the guards called out, “Hey, you three! Stop right there!”

They were the only people currently passing through the gate, so they had no choice but to comply. 

The guard who had stopped them came closer, and the other three moved to block the way back into the city. 

“What’s your business leaving the city?” the guard asked. He was big and heavily armored and Caleb didn’t like this at all. 

But he put on his most charming smile and said, “ _ Hallo _ , sir!” Improvising as fast as he could, he threw an arm around Mollymauk’s shoulders. “My fiancé and I are traveling to Blumenthal so he can meet my family.”

The guard scowled and gestured to Yasha. “And her?”

“These roads are dangerous for common folk like us, sir. We hired her to protect us out there in the wilderness.”

The guard’s eyes flicked down to Molly’s belt, off of which hung twin scimitars. “Common folk, you say?”

“ _ Ja, _ ” Caleb said, ignoring the scimitars entirely. 

“Dusk on a stormy day seems like a pretty bad time to start a journey.” The guard planted himself close in front of Caleb and crossed his arms. 

He was stalling, Caleb realized. Buying time until something much worse arrived.

“ _ Ja _ , we’re running a bit late. So if you don’t mind…” he gestured to the open road over his shoulder. 

“Not so fast,” the guard warned, and then his eyes went black and Molly grabbed his and Yasha’s hands and screamed, “Run!”

They turned and sprinted out of the gate, a crossbow bolt missing Caleb’s shoulder by a hair’s breadth as they ran. One of the three back guards stopped to see to the blinded one, but the other two gave chase. 

Another crossbow bolt zoomed right between Molly’s horns and he cried out in surprise. Caleb glanced over his shoulder and saw that one of the pursuing guards had stopped and was aiming yet another bolt, while the other had nearly caught up to them. 

Caleb had never had to do magic under such pressure before. He cursed as he ran and tried to come up with a plan besides “run faster.”

It took him a second to realize that Molly had stopped running, but he too stopped and spun around as soon as he did, fearing the worst. But Molly was still standing, holding both scimitars and drawing them slowly across his chest, in the bare space of his open-necked shirt.

The charging Crownsguard seemed confused and paused for a second before resuming his attack on Molly. 

Molly’s scimitars lit up in a burst of arcane energy, one fire and the other ice. Caleb had an absurd, shock-fueled thought that he should be taking notes on this. 

The guard came into Molly’s range and swung his longsword back, but Molly’s icy scimitar found his neck as the fiery one slipped into an open joint in his armor. 

The Crownsguard dropped to the ground just as a crossbow bolt gazed Molly’s shoulder, spraying an arc of blood but not sticking into his flesh. 

Caleb shouted and grabbed Molly by the elbow, dragging him into a sprint away from the Crownsguard and the city. Yasha looked ready to bullrush the crossbow-wielding one, but as he and Caleb ran by her, Molly cried, “Let’s go! I’m fine, it’s not worth it!”

She followed without protest, resheathing her greatsword as they ran. 

Another bolt barely missed Caleb, and without thinking he reached into one of the bags on his belt, crushed a small bit of sulfur between his fingers, and turned to aim his outstretched hand at their assailant. A jagged burst of red energy snaked between his hand and the Crownsguard, and when the beam made contact with the ground in front of him, it exploded in a massive ball of flames. The heavily armored guard was thrown into the air like a ragdoll then crashed back to the ground, unmoving and smoking.

Caleb turned from the scene. The man hadn’t even had time to scream. Not like Caleb’s mother, who’d screamed and screamed before the flames devoured her, the flames that he’d made, that he’d burned her alive with—

“Caleb!” 

Molly was shouting and grabbing him by the shoulders. His voice dropped quieter as he said, “Caleb, I don’t know what’s wrong, but we need to get going now. There’ll be time for this later, okay?”

Caleb nodded mechanically as he realized he’d stopped running. He allowed Molly to take him by the hand and lead him off again as fast as he could move, which was becoming slower and slower as the immediate threat of a longsword or bolt to the neck lessened and his skinny legs grew tired. 

The remaining Crownsguard were shouting behind them. Yasha took the lead and guided them straight into the woods, off the dirt road. “Where are we going?” Molly yelled. 

“I don’t know! Far from here!” she replied. 

They raced through the woods until Caleb couldn’t run any longer. He leaned against a tree for support and gasped for air. He muscles burned and his cheeks were scratched from stray branches and he was splattered in mud from the waist down. He would have sunk to the soft ground if it wouldn’t have soaked him through his clothes. 

Molly and even Yasha were huffing heavily as they stopped alongside him. They’d run aimlessly through the trees so their path wouldn’t be easy to discern, but if the Crownsguard were fast enough they’d be able to follow their tracks in the mud before the coming rain washed them away. 

As Caleb’s heart rate returned to normal, he slid down the trunk of his tree into the mud, not caring about the cold wetness of the forest floor. 

He was a fugitive, a traitor to the empire, a runaway with Crownsguard blood on his hands. It had been so easy to throw that fire, to end that guard’s life with a single motion of his hand. Had it been that easy to light the fire that burned his home? Had a crushed bit of sulfur and a wave of the hand been all it took to burn his whole life to the ground? He couldn’t remember that far back in the memory, just the sight of a red and orange against a backdrop of starry black—

Molly was kneeling on the ground in front of him, a hand on his face. “Caleb. Come on, Caleb, come back to us!”

Caleb snapped out of his daze and frowned at Molly. He didn’t normally like being touched, but right now the hand on his cheek was the only thing grounding him to reality, to this present moment. 

“What now?” he croaked. “We can’t go back to Rexxentrum.”

“That was off the table as soon as you had your vision,” Molly pointed out. “Our current destination is anywhere but here. It’s kind of freeing, isn’t it?”

But Caleb hardly heard the last few words. Molly was right. It was his own fault, and his alone, that the three of them were out here right now, being hounded by the Crownsguard. If he hadn’t tried to unlock Molly’s memories without his permission, if he hadn’t fucked up the spell to do it so badly, none of this would have happened. He could be back at the Assembly, doing his research and hanging out with his friends and living a normal life. It had all been a lie, of course, but the truth hurt too badly and he wanted to give it back, to cut the horrible knowledge of what he’d done out of his own mind again. What Trent had done to him had been a kindness, really. He shouldn’t have been mad at him, shouldn’t have thrown away the gift, he should have  _ thanked  _ him for doing such risky magic just to let Caleb live a normal life—

“We have to keep moving,” Yasha said, more gently than he would have expected. “The guards will be looking for us by now, and our tracks aren't hard to follow.”

Caleb nodded numbly. If he just stopped thinking, if he just focused on the present moment and did whatever Molly and Yasha told him to, maybe he would be okay. 

Yasha led the way deeper into the woods. Caleb couldn’t tell if she had any destination or was just wandering, but he didn’t really care. He counted the leaves on bushes and the dripping of raindrops off a branch and whatever he could see to occupy his mind, to not let himself think or remember. 

It was well past nightfall by the time they made camp. Eve Caleb couldn’t discern the exact time— he’d spent too long zoned out and had lost track, and there was no sky visible through the canopy to give him the position of the stars or moon. 

They found a large, flat boulder half-embedded on the bank of a creek to make camp on. It would be better than the soaking mud of the forest floor, and better yet, they wouldn’t leave tracks on it. 

Molly and Yasha hung a sheet of fabric from a low-hanging branch and weighed the back of it down with river rocks. It made a feeble makeshift tent, but it would work in lieu of being able to set up tent poles. 

Caleb watched them and focused on their every action, memorizing the process. He’d never made a tent before, and hadn’t slept outside since he was a little child and would sometimes drag his blankets out into the yard on warm, clear summer nights. 

Yasha offered to take first watch, and Caleb was reminded that, yeah, that was something they needed to do now, watch each other’s backs while they were sleeping.

He rolled out his blankets under the meager cover of the tent and curled up under them. One woolen blanket was the only thing spearing him from the wet, cold stone. His only source of comfort was the radiating heat coming off Molly’s tiefling body. They lay back to back, mere inches apart to both fit under the tent. 

Caleb fell asleep to the sound of dripping raindrops and the rushing creek, but when sleep did finally take him, he dreamt only of fire. 


	9. Little Goblin Girl

The days turned into a week on the road, which soon became nearly a month. Caleb grew used to going to bed with aching muscles and an empty stomach, until his legs grew stronger and he grew well versed enough in edible plants to help Yasha and Molly forage for food. He still had nightmares often, but his days were better. He talked with the others and sometimes he even smiled at jokes. Molly kept practicing with his abilities, until his chest and forearms were crisscrossed with both open cuts and scars that faded to dark violet or pale lavender. Caleb didn’t even use arcane flames to light campfires,  but eventually he could look into fire for a little while without going into a foggy haze. 

They made an intentionally nonsensical path through the countryside, alternating between wide arcs through the wilderness and stretches of travel along the roads. It was precisely twenty-six days after they fled Rexxentrum that they decided they’d gotten far enough away that they could safely enter a town. 

It was such a tiny roadside village that it wasn’t even marked on Caleb’s map. It was really more of just a main square for the surrounding farmlands, with a tiny town hall smaller than many houses Caleb had seen. But they had a cozy-looking little inn, and Caleb could have cried tears of joy at the thought of sleeping in a real bed again.

The trio booked a single room for one night, and even that felt like luxury compared to the past month. Up in the room, Caleb tossed his bags down at the foot of one small bed as Molly and Yasha claimed the other two. It was a cramped room that probably should only have had two beds in it, but it was warm and dry. 

Once they were settled in, Molly grabbed his scimitars and declared that he was going to practice out in the field behind the inn, and Yasha said she was going for a walk. 

As soon as the door closed behind them, Caleb flopped down into his bed and relished in the quiet solitude. It had been too long since he’d had any time to himself. He grabbed one of his spellbooks from his backpack and began copying the most useful ones into his notebook. It was a familiar ritual, one he found immense peace in. 

For the first time, Caleb wondered if maybe this aimless plan of theirs would work out okay. 

 

——————

 

Molly found a fallen log by the edge of the woods to prop up as a training dummy. He didn’t know where his newfound skill with his scimitars had come from, and if he’d learned anything from Caleb, it was that he was probably better off not knowing. 

He decided it was best not to use his blood powers in such plain view of the town, so he stuck to practicing his more mundane sword skills, twirling about and hacking away at the log. After a while, a small group of children from the village came over to investigate the purple stranger with his strange rainbow tattoos. They laughed in wonder as he pushed up his sleeves to show them the flowers and snake swirling down his arm, and one of the girls asked how old tieflings were when their “markings” started to show up. Their eyes bulged as he laughed and explained that no, those weren’t a tiefling thing, he’d gotten them put on his skin intentionally. They began to ask him if he was some sort of wandering hero like in the legends and bedtime stories, but they were interrupted by a few parents coming over and gathering them back up, shooting dark, suspicious glares at Molly as they walked away. 

And so Molly was left alone again. As the afternoon gave way to evening, he began growing tired. It sounded like there was some sort of brawl going on in the tavern, so he stayed out a while longer, until his blades shattered the old log and his muscles screamed in protest. 

He decided it was finally time to head in for the evening, and made his way back to the inn. Up in the room, he found that Yasha was still out for her walk, and Caleb was gone as well, though thankfully his stuff was still there. He’d been worried for a while that he’d wake up one morning and Caleb would have left during his watch. The man was doing better lately, for sure, but he was still fragile. Molly still caught him staring too long and too blankly at nothing in particular, and sometimes he had to say his name several times to get his attention before he could talk to him. 

Molly hated how helpless the whole situation made him feel. He wanted to help Caleb in any way he could, but he knew his trauma ran deeper than anything a shoulder to cry on or a hand to hold would heal. Then again, those things certainly wouldn’t  _ hurt _ , but Caleb was too stoic and far too proud to accept such comforts. 

Molly tried not to think about how much he’d been thinking about Caleb lately, which only led him to thinking about him more.

As much to distract himself as anything, Molly headed back downstairs for dinner. About the time he ordered his food, Yasha returned and joined him at the table.

“Where’s Caleb?” she asked. “I thought he’d be with you.”

Molly shrugged, trying to be nonchalant. “I dunno. I figured he must have gone for a walk or something like you.”

“Thought you might have taken more advantage of being alone with him.”

“Okay, what’s  _ that  _ supposed to mean?” he demanded with a scowl. 

Yasha shrugged. “I’ve seen you looking at him. I know you’re fond of him.”

Yasha may have been quiet, but not much got past her, especially concerning Molly. 

He lowered his voice, as if anyone else in the tavern knew or cared what he was talking about, and said, “It’s not that simple. I am… fond of him, like you said, but I’m not so selfish to put that on him when he’s already got so much shit to work through. He—" his voice dropped to a bare whisper— “he just learned a few weeks ago that he killed his own parents! That’s not the kind of thing you get over in a month.”

Yasha was nodding along. “You’re right. I’m glad you can see it.”

Their conversation turned lighter as their food arrived and the evening wore on. Molly tried not to worry, but he couldn’t help but wonder where Caleb was. It was growing dark, and this was an unfamiliar town, as small and innocuous as it seemed. 

By the time they headed back up to their room for the night, Molly couldn’t shake the feeling that something was wrong. It was unlike Caleb to wander off at all, let alone for a whole day into the night. But he tried to rationalize his fears, tell himself that Caleb was an independent adult who was perfectly capable of being alone. Maybe he’d even met some attractive stranger who was currently helping him fuck away his stress and—

Nope, nope, he wouldn’t let his mind go down that road, for so many reasons. Not the least of which was that in his mind’s eye, the person Caleb was tangled with was purple and horned. 

Besides, what did he care if Caleb was off getting laid with some stranger that he’d never have to see again? Good for him, really, if that was what he was doing. Gods knew he needed something to relax him, and a night of good sex was one of the less destructive ways he could go about it. 

Molly hunkered down under his blankets and tried to think about anything other than Caleb fucking someone who wasn’t him. 

 

——————

 

Caleb couldn’t see anything through his blindfold, but he could sense the sudden darkness as he was roughly pulled along down a staircase by two Crownsguard. The air down here felt damp and musty and clammy. 

“There’s only one cell down here, so you’ll be stuck with the little monster,” one of the guards sneered. “Maybe she’ll save us some trouble and eat you alive.”

Caleb hadn’t thought he could panic any more than he already was, but what was he supposed to make of that? Was there some cannibal being held down in this cell?

He could hear a door opening, then he was being shoved roughly forward. Unable to see and bound by the wrists, he stumbled and toppled to his knees in the cool, hard-packed dirt. The door slammed shut behind him, and the guards and their torches faded away up the stairs, and he was left in total silence and darkness. 

He began to struggle against the ties binding his hands before a shrill voice said from the darkness, “Do you need some help with those?”

“Hmph?” he mumbled through the gag, then nodded, then tried to get out a muffled, “ _ ja _ ,” when he remembered the lack of light. 

A pair of quick, small hands brushed his face as the blindfold and gag were removed, then something skittered around him and his hands were unbound. 

“ _ Danke shön _ ,” he muttered, rubbing at the irritation from the rough bindings. 

“Huh? What’s that mean?” the voice squeaked, a bit suspiciously. 

“Oh. Right. It’s Zemnian for ‘thank you.’”

“Oh! You’re welcome! Do you have a name, mister?”

Caleb sighed. It’s not like he could make things any worse for himself, right? “I’m Caleb.”

“Nice to meet you, Caleb. I’m Nott.”

“You’re not what?” he asked in confusion. 

“No, I’m Nott.” She seemed to realize that Caleb wasn’t getting it, so she added, “That’s my name. My name is Nott. Nott the Brave, to be specific.”

“Oh. Okay,” Caleb said, because he wasn’t sure what else there was to say. 

He murmured an incantation under his breath and sent three balls of glowing light up into the air. In the far corner of the small cell, the light reflected off what he thought were cat’s eyes at first, before his eyes adjusted the rest of the way and saw a humanoid face with green skin and craggy teeth. 

He blinked in surprise at the goblin staring out of the shadows at him. He’d never seen one before, only read about them in cautionary storybooks as a child.

Nott averted her big eyes as he observed her. “Yeah, I know. Kinda rough the first time you see it.” She pushed a strand of limp blackish-green hair out of her face, which was partially wrapped in bandages. “And also every time after that. But don’t worry. The guards were lying. I don’t eat people.”

“Oh, that’s good,” Caleb said weakly. “So, what  _ are _ you in here for?”

“Stealing some rocks.”

Caleb frowned. “Rocks?”

“Yeah. Really shiny ones that this lady was wearing around her neck.”

Caleb couldn’t help but laugh aloud in his shock at this whole situation. “ _ Ja, _ those kind of rocks generally aren’t for the taking. How long have you been down here?” 

“Three days. They haven’t fed me. I think they really do want me to eat a cellmate, y’know, to make me into a real-life monster to scare criminals with.”

“Three days without food? That’s terrible.” Caleb wanted to keep talking. Talking meant he couldn’t think too much, and he was scared to be alone with his thoughts right now. 

“Yeah, it’s pretty awful. What about you? What did you do to get thrown down here?”

Caleb watched the globes of light dance around Nott’s head for a moment. “I’m a fugitive. I have information that the Empire would not want getting out, so they’re trying to capture me.”

He hadn’t thought it would be possible, but Nott’s eyes grew even wider as he spoke. “So you’re some kind of secret spy or something?” she asked. 

He chuckled humorlessly. “ _ Nein _ , not so much.”

“Oh. Well, fuck the Empire, and let’s get out of here.”

Caleb felt an irrational burst of anger at her words against the Empire, but he managed to push it down. “I’d like to, but how?” he asked, moving a ball of light over so he could examine the door. It was a mass of mostly thick, solid wood, but there was a small metal grate set into it around eye-height for a human, about one square foot large. 

“You’re a magic-user,” Nott said, gesturing to the glowing orbs. “Can’t you magic us out?”

“Unfortunately, no. I need my spellbooks and supplies to do most of my magic.”

Nott frowned. “What  _ can  _ you do on your own? The keys are right there!” She ran to the grate and stood on her tiptoes to point at the bottom of the stairs, to a single wooden chair, a small side table, and a hook in the wall off of which dangled a clunky keyring. 

Caleb snapped his fingers and Frumpkin appeared on his shoulder. 

Nott gasped. “You have a magic cat? That’s so cool!”

Caleb murmured some instructions to Frumpkin, then dumped him onto the bottom of the grate. He leapt down out of the cell with a squeak and hopped up onto the table. 

He swatted at the key, but his little cat paws couldn’t get it over the edge of the round hook.

“Dammit,” Caleb growled. “Okay, there is one thing I can do, but I don’t like it.”

“Will it get us out?” Nott asked. 

“ _ Ja _ , hopefully. I can burn the door down.”

Nott knocked on the solid wood for a second then said, “Yeah, that should work! We'll just have to stay back.”

“ _ Ja,  _ stay in the corner,” Caleb ordered. He dismissed Frumpkin to his pocket dimension before murmuring a couple words under his breath and lighting a small, candle-like flame in the palm of his hand. He joined Nott at the far end of the cell and hurled the flame at the door, where it collided with a shower of sparks. At first he thought the little flame wasn’t enough to light up the heavy door, but after a few moments the sparks caught and the door began smoking and flickering at the point of impact. 

Caleb began to wish that there was a window in this dungeon, because if this fire didn’t burn fast, they’d suffocate from the smoke long before the door was destroyed.

Nott must have realized this too, because she tore a strip of cloth off her tattered cloak and tied it over her nose and mouth.

The flames caught stronger and began to burn in earnest, boring into the wood as chunks fell off it in smoking embers. 

Nott coughed, and Caleb felt guilty about how much more the smoke must be affecting her tiny lungs. But then, as he flames grew, he stopped feeling anything. 

The sparks falling from the door turned to stars in his mind, and he could hear a faint echo of his mother screaming out his father’s name. He’d had enough time to process the memory that he now understood that his father was already long dead by the time Caleb had heard her screaming for him. A large chunk of wood fell away, and Caleb saw his home’s wall fall in, and he felt the dewy grass under his knees, and someone was shaking his shoulders. 

“Caleb!” Nott shrieked. “The hole’s big enough, if we jump fast the flames won’t catch us too bad!”

Caleb blinked back to the moment and stared into the crumbling embers of the door. Nott tugged at his scarf as she ran towards the largest hole that had formed. She let go and hopped through with no issue, but Caleb knew his larger frame wouldn’t have such an easy time with it. 

“Come on!” she yelled from the hall, holding out her hand to him. 

He couldn’t touch the flames. Flames were death, flames left black charred bones in the ashes of a once-happy home—

Nott was coughing harder even through her mask. If she didn’t get out soon, she’d suffocate as the flames devoured all the air in the room. 

He couldn’t kill another innocent person. 

He grabbed her hand and ducked through the hole. A few tongues of fire caught on the edges of his coat, but he and Nott stamped them out quick enough. 

He hated how familiar, how almost comfortable the burning felt against his skin. 

Nott was already grabbing the keys off the ring and racing up the stairs toward the door. 

Caleb let his instincts lead him up after her. “What do we do on the other side?” he asked as she fumbled to find the right key for the exit door. “We’ll be in the guardhouse—“

As he said it, voices began shouting on the other side. It was hard to make out, but Caleb caught fragments of “There’s smoke—“ and “the prisoners—“ and “evacuate the building—“ from several different voices. 

Boots echoed on the floor and a door slammed and silence washed over the guardhouse, except for the ever-growing roar of flames. 

“Got it!” Nott cried as she flung the door open onto an empty guardhouse. 

They tumbled out of the door almost on top of each other, then righted themselves and started running. Nott grabbed a metal helmet that someone had left on a table and hurled it at a window, which she easily vaulted out of. Caleb stumbled behind her and found his footing on the ground just as one of the guards who was gathered around the burning building shouted, “The prisoners! They’re fleeing!”

Caleb and Nott began running faster as the guards gave chase. Nott’s short legs struggled to keep up with Caleb’s full sprint, so he scooped her up like a toddler and ran toward the trees. 

 

———————

 

Molly heard screaming and glass breaking from the other side of the town square. He pressed his nose to the glass of the window and said in confusion, “Yasha, the guard house is on fire.”

Yasha joined him by the window.

Molly gasped, “Holy shit, that’s Caleb!” as he pointed towards a lanky figure racing towards the trees, clutching some sort of large object close to his chest. 

When he turned around, Yasha was already slinging her and Caleb’s bags onto her back and tossing Molly’s to him.

They raced down the stairs to find the tavern empty, as everyone inside had poured out to watch the chaos unfold across the square. Molly threw down the gold to cover their room plus an extra coin onto the bar and ran out to push his way through the gathered crowd. Yasha was close behind, and people seemed so startled by them that most moved aside without question. 

Molly huffed between gasps of air as he ran, “How are we supposed to find him? He ran into the woods!”

“Guards followed him. They’re heavily armored. They’ll be loud,” Yasha explained. She sounded hardly out of breath despite carrying both her and Caleb’s gear. 

They looped around to avoid entering the forest at the same point as Caleb, as the remaining guards were certainly still watching. The chaos of the town faded behind them as they breached the woods, and soon they heard, coming right towards them, the sound of clanging armor, shouting, and an unfamiliar reedy voice shrinking obscenities into the night. 

Molly and Yasha exchanged a confused glance and slowed down as the noises approached, and within moments, Caleb burst out of the darkness, looking singed and manic, carrying what appeared to be a child in his arms. 

They looked at each other for a split second before silently turning and following Caleb. 

As they ran behind him, Molly got a good look at the face of the person Caleb was carrying, and realized it most definitely was not a child. Big yellow eyes stared behind them at the pursuing guards, and her thin lips were pulled back in a snarl of sharp, crooked teeth. 

Molly decided that this wasn’t the weirdest thing that had ever happened to him and kept running. 

The guards’ armor must have weighed them down, because the longer the group ran, the farther away the sounds of clanging and shouting got. 

They were all breathless and sweat-drenched despite the chill air by the time they felt safe enough to stop running. 

Caleb set his new goblin friend on her feet before sitting down with his back against a tree trunk. 

Molly sat cross-legged in the mossy dirt next to him. “So. Do you wanna talk about it?” he asked. 

Caleb sighed deeply. “Not really,” he croaked eventually. The he gestured at the goblin and said, “This is Nott.”

“Hello,” she greeted. “You’re very purple. I’ve never met a purple person before.”

“And I’ve never met a goblin,” Molly replied, holding his hand out for a shake. Sitting on the ground, he was almost the same height as Nott was standing up. They clasped hands, and he said, “I’m Molly. Did you help Caleb escape?”

“ _ Ja _ , she did,” Caleb murmured as Nott said, “Caleb did all the hard work. He knows some really amazing magic!”

Molly glanced between the two of them until Caleb said, “I burned the place down to get us out.”

“Oh,” Molly said softly. He was again overcome by the urge to pull Caleb into a tight hug, but he wasn’t sure he’d be comfortable with that. “Are you… okay?”

Caleb nodded, but he kept staring into the darkness of the trees with a hollow expression. “No one died,” he murmured softly. “They all got out and left us to die down there.”

Molly forced a confident smile. “Sounds like a win-win situation to me. You guys got out safe, and those assholes you left you to burn got a pretty serious property damage bill.”

Caleb hummed noncommittally. 

“So… are you Caleb’s friends?” Nott asked as silence fell again.

“Yeah,” Molly replied. “Like I said, I’m Molly, and this big lady here is Yasha.”

Nott looked up at Yasha with big eyes. “You  _ are  _ very tall.”

Yasha shrugged and replied, “You’re very small.”

Once introductions were made and everyone had caught their breath again, they gathered themselves and began walking in a direction that Yasha assured them was parallel to the main road. They didn’t stop to set up camp until well past midnight. 

Molly and Yasha offered to take first watch to let the others recover from their prison break. 

Once they heard snoring, Molly leaned his head against Yasha’s shoulder and said, “This is our life now, isn’t it?”

Yasha was silent for a while. “For now,” she eventually conceded. “I think we need to get out of the Dwendalian Empire. That might be the only way we escape all of this.” There was an unspoken  _ at least while Caleb’s around _ at the end of her words.

Molly nodded. “You’re right. I’ve heard the Menagerie Coast is nice.”

Yasha watched him staring off into the darkness. “I’ve never seen the sea before.”

“Me neither.”

Yasha let Molly fall asleep on her shoulder as their watch drew on. 


	10. Devil's Tongue

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> things have been pretty angsty lately so here's a brief smutty interlude
> 
> also, disclaimer: i don't speak german so google was my translator for the zemnian phrases caleb says in this

The weather grew more mild as summer drew nearer and the group made their way farther down through the Empire. The incident with the jail seemed to have set Caleb back quite a bit, and he stopped looking directly at campfires again for a while. Molly thanked the Moonweaver that no one died in the fire. He didn’t think Caleb could handle that.

One thing that seemed to help was that Caleb had started teaching Nott a few basic spells. Molly had never heard of a goblin wizard before, but Nott was quick and clever and took to it right away. 

On the rare occasion when they stayed in an inn for a night, Molly always shared a room with Yasha, and Caleb with Nott. Molly loved Yasha dearly and tried not to resent the fact that they never switched up the room arrangements. Why would he, after all?

He got his first moments alone with Caleb a few days outside of some town called Hupperduke. Yasha had scouted the area around their camp and reported that there was a river not too far that would be good for bathing. Molly leapt enthusiastically at the opportunity, and Caleb begrudgingly agreed to join him. It was decided that they’d clean up now while the girls foraged for food, then cook whatever was found while the girls bathed.

They were in a rather mountainous region, so the hike to the river was full of ledges and short rocky slopes. Molly was quick enough on his feet, while Caleb needed a bit of a hand every once in a while. Molly obliged happily.

They reached the river, which turned out to be more of a small mountain stream that cascaded down the slope in haphazard pools and waterfalls. It was cold, but Molly hated the feeling of dirt and oil caked into every crease of his body, so he stripped and leapt into the water as soon as they arrived. 

He was surprised by how little hesitation Caleb showed in removing his clothing. The stuffy wizard seemed more concerned with making sure his clothes were placed carefully on rocks instead of in mud than anything else. 

The stream was only about four feet deep at its center, so Molly had to duck under the surface to fully wet his hair. When he re-emerged, Caleb was still standing on the bank.

“Are you okay? Do you know how to swim?” he asked with a frown. 

Caleb started when he spoke and seemed to come back to the present moment. Molly realized with dawning glee that Caleb had been staring at him, and had been too distracted to get in the water. His red eyes flicked to Caleb’s hips and he was almost disappointed to see that he was still fully soft— clearly he hadn’t been putting on a good enough show. He was out of practice, after all. 

Caleb finally walked slowly into the water, giving his body time to adjust to the cold. 

“It’s refreshing, isn’t it?” Molly asked. He wanted to swim closer to Caleb but resisted. 

“ _ Ja _ , I guess,” Caleb agreed. “I’ve heard cold baths are good for you, but I’ve always preferred warm.”

He was mere feet from Molly by the time he dunked his head under. He pushed a darkened strand of wet hair out of his face and Molly couldn’t help but watch the cold, clear mountain water running off his nose and clinging to his eyelashes like tiny diamonds.

“It’s been a long time since we’ve been alone,” Molly blurted out before he even considered it. 

Caleb nodded. “ _ Ja,  _ it has. It’s funny, I suppose. It started out just you and me, but this thing just keeps getting bigger.”

“I could help you get bigger,” Molly said with a wicked grin. 

Caleb sighed exaggeratedly and shook his head. “You just had to, didn't you?”

“For old times’ sake,” Molly laughed. “Though to be fair, you set me right up for that one.”

Caleb offered him a half-smile and Molly’s heart fluttered at the way his eyes scrunched when he smiled. 

Like always, Molly’s mouth was running before his mind caught up. “I know I joke a lot, but it’s not always really joking, y’know?”

Caleb frowned at him in a way that clearly said no, he had no idea what Molly was saying— or at least he didn’t believe a word of it. 

“I’m serious,” Molly continued, then began rambling, “You’re pretty and I know you don’t smile a lot but when you do it’s the nicest thing I’ve ever seen, and you do this adorable little lip-chewing thing when you’re concentrating really hard on a spellbook, and you’re getting all freckly now that we’ve been on the road for so long and that’s really cute, and you’re so fucking smart and powerful with your magic, and… and…”

His voice trailed off. When he’d started speaking, he’d had every intent to tell Caleb that he was up for having sex with him. Even he hadn’t been prepared for the stream of confessions that had flowed out. 

Caleb was watching him with a flat, stoic expression. “What are you saying?” he finally muttered.

Molly laughed and shrugged and splashed at the water to try and break them tension he’d created. “I dunno. You’re hot and I’d fuck you if you’re down?”

They both knew that wasn’t the full truth. They both chose to ignore that fact. 

Caleb stepped closer to him. Molly hadn’t been expecting that. 

“You’re serious?” he asked, staring up at him with those impossibly blue eyes. 

“Yes. In a heartbeat,” Molly said without breaking eye contact. 

Caleb took another step towards him, and suddenly they were standing mere inches apart, chest-deep in the cold stream. Molly knew that Caleb was close enough to feel his tiefling warmth radiating through the water. It must have felt so welcoming, a little oasis of heat in the surrounding cold.

He leaned in, and for a second Molly thought he was going to kiss him full on the mouth. But his lips instead found the scars fading on Molly’s chest, and somehow it felt just as intimate as a kiss on the lips.

Molly whined aloud as Caleb leaned back again.  “Why do you want to do this?” Caleb asked.

_ Because you deserve happiness and intimacy and affection. Because I’m lonely and you’re beautiful. Because the shit we’ve been through has bonded us more than I ever would have thought possible. Because you’ve always treated me like a person instead of a spectacle. Because I think I might be falling _ —

Molly was glad that, for once, he’d decided to think before he spoke. So what he ended up telling Caleb was, “It’s been months since I’ve gotten laid, and I don’t know how long it’s been for you, but I bet a good ol’ orgasm will really help you unwind a bit.” He traced his fingers down Caleb’s goosebumped bicep. 

“Your hands are warm,” Caleb murmured. 

“All of me is warm,” Molly corrected. 

Then Caleb’s mouth was on his neck and his arms were around his body and Caleb was backing him up towards the bank, water running in rivers down their bodies. 

Caleb kissed down to his chest and up to his jawline and Molly wanted nothing more than to feel those lips against his own, but he didn’t want to push things.

Caleb hopped back so he was sitting on a large rock on the riverbank, his knees opened wide for Molly to stand between them. And Molly did so enthusiastically, pressing kisses to his chest and stomach and hips and inner thighs. 

Caleb began saying something, but stopped himself before Molly could discern what it was. 

“Is everything okay?” Molly asked.

“ _ Ja, ja, _ ” Caleb nodded. “I… I was going to say that this is wrong and we should stop, but I realized that’s not true.”

Molly cocked his head at him. “I agree that’s not true, but if it is how you feel, we can stop.”

Caleb shook his head. “No, it’s not how I feel. I’m just not used to letting myself feel how  _ I  _ feel and not how other people tell me I should feel.”

“Can I kiss you?” Molly blurted out. “I think I need to kiss you.”

Caleb looked down at him for a moment before slipping off the rock, grabbing Molly, and pinning him back against the rock. Their lips hovered a hair’s breadth apart as Caleb said, “You know how broken I am.”

“We’re both broken, fucked up disasters,” Molly replied. “Why don’t we be broken and fucked up  _ together _ ?”

Caleb closed the distance between them and Molly melted in his arms, gasping against his lips as they finally connected. 

“This isn’t how I imagined this happening,” Caleb half-laughed when they broke apart. 

Molly flashed a fanged grin. “You’ve imagined this before?”

His eyes flicked all over Molly’s face and body. “Of course. How could I not?”

Molly leaned back in and kissed and bit at his neck and shoulders, then made his way back up to his lips, and began exploring every bit of skin he could reach with his mouth. Caleb retained his composure for a while, but Molly was satisfied to hear him start gasping and moaning above him and feel his hardness pressing against his own hips. 

He pressed one last hard kiss to Caleb’s lips before dropping to his knees on the grassy riverbank. He looked up at Caleb with wide eyes and said, “May I?”

Caleb ran his fingers through Molly’s wet hair and said, “ _ Ja,  _ gods, yes.  _ Zeig es mir deine Teufelszunge.” _

“I don’t know what that means, but it sounds hot as fuck,” Molly laughed.

In response, Caleb tangled his fingers into the curls at the back of his head and pulled him forward onto his cock. 

 

——————

 

Caleb let his head fall back and he stared up into the cloudy sky as the heat of Molly’s mouth enveloped him. It had been a long time, years in fact, since he’d been with another person, and even longer since another man. He wanted nothing more than to bend Molly over and fuck him until they both were screaming, then let Molly do the same to him, but he knew that would require some supplies they didn’t have on hand. 

For now, he was still perfectly content to lean back and let Molly’s mouth work its magic on his long-neglected cock. He was so warm, impossibly so for the air temperature, and that just amplified the waves of pleasure he was sending through Caleb. 

“Fuck, Molly,” he gasped as the tiefling took him all the way into his throat. His cries devolved into nonsense Zemnian curses as Molly continued giving him perhaps the most enthusiastic, messy blowjob he’d ever received. 

As Caleb stroked his hands over Molly’s soft, damp curls, he couldn’t help but notice how perfectly placed his horns were at this height. He ran an index finger up the curled length of one, and Molly slipped off his cock just long enough to say, “You can grab them, if you’d like.”

Caleb decided he’d like that very much. 

He found a comfortable grip on them as Molly brought him closer and closer to the edge. When he grabbed the horns firmly, Molly moaned loudly and let his jaw fall slack, running his forked tongue around the cute O that his mouth formed. 

Caleb held him in place by the horns and slid forward into that warm, waiting heat. He groaned and repeated the motion, slowly several times. 

As he slipped out one last time, Molly snarled, “You call this a face-fucking? I want to see you fall apart. I want you to fuck out all your stress and frustration into my mouth. I want you to choke me with your cock and fill my face with so much of your seed I can’t even swallow it all.”

Caleb had never been spoken to like that before, and it filled him with a kind of lust and confidence he’d never experienced before. 

He did as Molly told him to, holding him firmly and thrusting harder and faster. 

Molly’s eyes were scrunched shut and watering but he was moaning around Caleb’s cock, palming himself with one hand.

Caleb could feel his orgasm building higher and higher until he couldn’t stand it any longer, and finally came with a shout as he spilled down Molly’s throat. 

He leaned back against the stone behind him, breathless and sated and absolutely ruined by the beautiful tiefling that was licking cum off his own lips at Caleb’s feet.

Molly smiled as he stood shakily. “That was fun!” he laughed. “We should do this more often.”

Caleb watched him in wonder. He could still scarcely believe that someone as beautiful and vibrant as Mollymauk had wanted to do such a thing with him, let alone to keep doing it.

He didn’t deserve this, didn’t deserve Mollymauk. But he was selfish, and Molly was willing— eager, even. So what harm was there in occasionally having some fun with each other? Besides, Molly had been right; he did feel more relaxed than he had in a long time. He could have curled right up on the riverbank for a nap if wasn’t so cold. 

Molly kissed the corner of Caleb’s lips and headed back toward the water. 

“Wait!” Caleb called as he was knee-deep in the river. 

Molly stopped and turned. “Yeah?”

Caleb rushed down to join him and dropped to his knees just like Molly had on the bank. “It’s your turn,” he said as he took Molly’s leaking cock in his hand and began stroking. 

Molly sighed happily and draped his tail around Caleb’s shoulders. It wasn’t prehensile enough to really wrap around him or hold him in place, but the gently, subtly possessive gesture was somehow even hotter. 

Caleb dipped his head down and took Molly in his mouth. He was out of practice, but it didn’t take long for him to get back into the swing of things. He’d almost forgotten how much he enjoyed this, using his clever tongue to bring selfless pleasure to a lover. 

But Molly wasn’t his lover, of course. 

Molly had touched himself enough on the bank that it didn’t take long for him to curl forward and grasp desperately at Caleb’s hair as he finished with a loud cry. 

Caleb let the seed drip from the corners of his mouth as he smiled up at Molly, who whined desperately at that sight. He felt a little blossom of pride in his chest; Molly wasn’t the only one who knew how to put on a show. 

Molly leaned down and hooked his arms under Caleb’s armpits, and suddenly he was being lifted up and toppled over into the middle of the river. He shrieked with laughter as they both went under, and he tugged playfully at Molly’s tail as they both found their footing and stood up again. 

“You’re such an  _ arschloch,”  _ he laughed, splashing Molly. 

“If that means what it sounds like, then you’re absolutely right,” Molly said with a cheeky grin.

Caleb sighed. As his post-coital bliss faded, he came back to the reality of the moment. “I suppose we should actually get cleaned up and head back to camp. Nott and Yasha will worry if we’re gone too long.”

“Nott might, but Yasha will probably know exactly what’s going on,” Molly laughed. “She’s quiet, but she’s clever and knows me very well.”

With the electricity of the moment fading, they washed quickly and redressed on the riverbank. Caleb’s traveling clothes were warm, but he couldn’t help but think about how they weren’t nearly as warm as Mollymauk. 

 

————————

 

When they got back to camp, Yasha and Nott were gathered around a roaring fire, peeling some misshapen foraged root vegetables and chopping bits of rabbit meat. 

“Hey, we’re supposed to be doing the cooking!” Molly said, snatching the vegetable and knife from Yasha’s hands. 

She cast him a knowing glance with her mismatched eyes. “Yeah, you  _ were _ , but you took so long at the river that we got bored.”

Nott said quickly, “Yeah, it was a long time that you two were down there, and it’s getting pretty late. I guess that means it’s too late for us to head down there. Oh well!”

Molly frowned at her odd tone. “Nott, are you afraid of water or something?”

“What?” she shrieked, far too loudly than the situation called for. “No, of course not, that would be ridiculous!”

Molly and the others watched her with raised brows and dubious eyes. 

“Okay, sure, of course not,” Molly laughed. “Forget I asked.”

He chopped the potato-like vegetable into their small cooking pot, and tucked that tidbit of information away in the back of his mind. He was starting to get to know his companions in ways he hadn’t expected. By now he knew Nott was afraid of water, that she had a bit of a kleptomaniac tendency, that she disliked overly-sweet foods and had a surprisingly protective streak, especially towards Caleb. 

And of course he knew Caleb better than he ever could have anticipated when he walked through the front doors of the Cerberus Assembly with him. The truth about his past, the betrayal of his best friends, the way his eyes screwed shut and mouth hung open when he was cumming.

He tried not to think about that last one. He didn’t need any awkward boners right now. 

By the time they were eating their watery stew of rabbit and wild vegetables, darkness had fallen and the chill in the wind cut through Molly’s coat. He wanted to cuddle up to Caleb for warmth, but he knew their relationship wasn’t there yet. In fact, he wasn’t sure their relationship was  _ there  _ at all, that it even was anything beyond two friends working out some tension and frustrations together.

He decided he’d be happy with whatever Caleb wanted their relationship to be, as long as he got to keep spending time with his favorite wizard. 


	11. Fireworks

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> hey so life's gotten a bit crazy for me over the past couple weeks, so unfortunately the update schedule for this is going to be a little irregular for a while, but don't worry! i'm not abandoning this fic, i'm having too much fun with it!!
> 
> also, i know it's been a while, but here's 4,600 word chapter to make up for it

In the mid afternoon a few days later, the group wandered in dismay into the town of Hupperduke. It was the first town they’d dared enter since the prison debacle; they were finally far enough from Rexxentrum that they felt it was safe enough, as long as they didn’t call attention to themselves.

For once, Nott was the least conspicuous of their group. Her small frame was similar to the gnomes that primarily populated the industrious town, and as long as she kept her good up she got few second glances. 

The streets were quiet anyway as they meandered around until they found an inn. It was small inside, with most of the furniture sized for gnomes and only a couple human-sized tables in the back.

Caleb kept his head down while Molly went forward to the bar. He exchanged some coin with the innkeeper and returned with two keys, one of which he kept and one he handed to Yasha. 

“They’re out of human-sized beds, so we’re going to have to make do,” he explained. “Since Yasha and Nott are the biggest and smallest, I figured they could share, while Caleb and I are medium enough that we can probably work something out.”

Caleb avoided eye contact with any of his companions. No one had asked Molly for such a detailed description of his thought process, and Caleb worried it just made everything look suspicious. Nott sure was looking at him with a confused frown, at least. 

But Yasha accepted her key without protest, and Nott remained quiet. 

So he had a bedroom to share with Mollymauk tonight— a night that was fast approaching as the golden light of afternoon faded to the reds of sunset.

As they all headed up to drop off their bags, Molly said, “Oh, when I was getting the rooms, the innkeeper asked me if we were here for ‘the party tonight.’ I told her I didn’t know, and she said that we were in for a treat, but that if we needed to buy anything today, the shops will all be closing as soon as it gets dark.”

Caleb noted that as Molly unlocked their room and held the door for him. He tossed his bags onto the bed and only kept the basics on himself— his coin purse, his two favorite spellbooks, his belt pouch of components. 

“I do have one errand to run,” he said. “I’ll be back by the time it’s dark, I suppose.”

“Oh, I have some stuff I need to pick up too!” Molly said. “We can go together. It’s safer than way anyway.”

“Um, okay,” Caleb agreed hesitantly. Molly’s logic was sound, but Caleb wasn’t sure he wanted him tagging along on this errand. Of course, ideally he’d be seeing the purchase eventually anyway, so maybe it didn’t matter.

They headed down to ask the innkeeper for directions, and when Caleb asked where the nearest apothecary was, Molly exclaimed, “Hey, that’s what I’m looking for too!”

The gnomish innkeeper gave them directions and they hurried out to beat nightfall. As they walked, Caleb tried to plan out ways he could purchase the lubricating oil he was looking for without Molly noticing or calling attention to it.

“So,” Molly began casually, his hands stuck in the deep pockets of his rainbow overcoat. “What’re you looking for at this apothecary?”

Caleb blushed. “Oh, you know, just some potions for the road.” 

He could tell Molly was side-eyeing him despite his lack of pupils. “Sure,” he said innocently. 

“What? You don’t believe me?” Caleb demanded, as if he wasn’t lying to Molly’s face.

“Hmm,” Molly hummed. “Well, that’s too bad. I was really hoping you were going to buy some slick so you could fuck me all night long, but alas.”

Caleb fell speechless. 

“Look, if we’re gonna do this, you’ve gotta be able to talk about it. Do you want to sleep together tonight?”

Caleb nodded. 

“That’s not  _ talking  _ about it.”

“Fine.  _ Ja,  _ yes, I want to,” Caleb finally conceded. As contrary as he was being, he knew Molly was right. They may not have been in a traditional relationship, but they were still doing things that required clear, honest, mature communication. 

Molly’s face lit up with a grin. “Good! You can ditch the coyness and shame, okay? There’s no point in us fucking the stress out of each other if you’re stressing yourself out about it.”

Caleb had to admit, Molly had a point. “Okay,  _ ja _ , maybe you’re right. Let’s just not talk about it in public?”

“That’s fair. See? This is good, we’re setting boundaries and communicating wants and needs.”

“Hm,” Caleb sighed. 

They turned a corner and, as the innkeeper had described, the apothecary was right in front of them. They ducked inside and were greeted by a chipper middle-aged gnome woman. The dried herbs and plants hanging from the ceiling almost brushed against the top of Caleb’s head, and Molly had to duck down a bit to avoid tangling his horns in them. 

“Is there anything in particular you’re lookin’ for?” the shopkeeper asked from behind the counter.

“Just looking for now,” Caleb mumbled. 

Molly, however, had no such hesitation. “Do you carry any sort of lubricant oils?”

“Of course! You lookin’ for machine oiling or personal use?” 

It had been so long, Caleb had almost forgotten that this was normal, to be an adult who needed a personal care item and to walk into a shop that sold such items and just ask for it. This was just what people did, what  _ real  _ people did, not lock themselves away in isolation in the headquarters of a shadowy government organization.

It was perhaps the first normal thing he’d done in a long time, going shopping in town with his… his friend. His Mollymauk. 

Finally he stopped pretending to be interested in insect repellent creams and joined Molly on the other side of the store. “What’s taking so long?” he asked, looking over his shoulder at the array of glass vials and little ceramic pots on the shelf. 

“I’m deciding if I should spend an extra five silver to get one that comes in a pretty painted pot and smells like flowers,” Molly explained. 

“Hm, I wouldn’t have pegged you for a frugal spender.”

“Good fucking point,” Molly declared as he snatched a white porcelain pot with pale blue flowers painted on it. Caleb picked up a plain glass vial from the same shelf and followed him to the counter. 

As they were paying for their goods, Molly asked the shopkeeper, “So, I hear that all the businesses in town shut down as soon as it gets dark. What’s that all about?”

Her face lit up. “Oh, this is your first night in town, then?”

They both nodded. 

She glanced out the windows behind them. “We’ll be closing up any minute now, and that’s when the fun starts. You’ll want to stay out for it, believe me.”

Caleb was a bit dubious about how vague she was being, but Molly looked intrigued and delighted. “The fun? Am I allowed to know what that means, or is it a surprise?”

“You’re  _ allowed,  _ but it might be more fun as a surprise.”

“Then a surprise it’ll be!” Molly declared. He slipped his jar of oil into an inner pocket of his coat and grabbed Caleb’s hand, dragging him out of the store. “Let’s go be surprised, darling!”

Caleb let himself be dragged from the store, and was a little bit disappointed when Molly dropped his hand when they reached the street.

Why was that disappointing? 

He didn’t have time to unpack that reaction right now. Molly was already racing over to a street vendor who must have set up while they were in the apothecary, as Caleb didn’t remember walking by them on the way over. Their cart was adorned with racks of silk flowers, some loose and others that were woven into crowns or necklaces or onto the tops of sticks with long streamers flowing off them.

By the time Caleb caught up, Molly was already buying four crowns and a streamer baton from the vendor. He turned and smooshed a ring of blue and gold flowers onto Caleb’s head, then tapped the crown with the baton. “This is a magic wand of carefree happiness,” Molly declared. “You’re immune to negative thoughts and self-deprecation for the rest of the night.”

Caleb crossed his arms but couldn’t fight a small smile. He knew there was no magic cure for the kind of pain he carried in his heart, but Molly’s laugh was a damn fine bandage in this fleeting moment.

As sunset gave way to night, more and more people began flowing out of the shops and workshops in this district and beyond. They crowded into the streets and all seemed to be headed in the same direction, so Caleb and Molly followed, and Caleb tried to just go with the flow and not question too much what was going on.

A tiny gnomish girl who barely came up to their knees ran up to Molly and tugged on the hem of his coat, squealing something about “pretty colors!”

Molly grinned and crouched down so she could see the embroidery on the sleeves. Instead, she tugged at the chains and charms on his horns and exclaimed, “You’re so shiny, mister!”

Molly laughed and agreed, and the girl’s mother scurried over, scooping her up into her arms. “I’m so sorry sir,” she huffed, “I just don’t think she’s ever seen someone so, um…” 

“It’s fine,” Molly said. “She’s right, I  _ am  _ very shiny.” He gave the girl another warm smile and held out the flowery baton he’d just bought. 

The girl looked between Molly and her mom then snatched the baton, even as her mother said, “Oh, there’s no need sir, that’s yours…”

“Nonsense!” Molly declared. “It’s hers now.”

The girl squealed in delight and waved the stick about wildly. 

Maybe Molly had been right about that wand, because right now Caleb felt a quiet moment of warmth in his chest. They’d been in sheer survival mode for so long now, he hadn’t seen this bright, playful side of Molly in a long time. He should have known that the bubbly, rainbow, shiny tiefling would be good with kids, but seeing it was far more endearing than he would have thought. 

The child and her mother faded back into the crowd as Molly threw his arm around Caleb’s shoulder and pulled him through the crowd. By this point, he knew they must have been close to the center of whatever was going on, because the street was packed almost shoulder to shoulder— or shoulder to hip, in the case of Caleb and Molly among the gnomes— and everyone was moving in the same direction.

Caleb stared out at the flowers adorning so many of the revelers in the crowd and remembered Blumenthal, his quiet hometown in the Zemni Fields. It was a town full of flowers, lining the main streets and the town square and the windowboxes of practically every home. 

Every year they had a springtime festival at peak season for the flowers, and he recalled one year when the spring had been unseasonably warm and the festival had happened earlier than usual. He’d danced in the light of the moon and bonfire in the town square, he and Astrid and Eodwulf twirling all together around the fire with the other children of the village while a band played a traditional song on the drums and pipes. He could still perfectly see the bright flash of Astrid’s smile and the horrible wispy goatee that Wulfie had sported that year, because they were fifteen and he was proud he could grow one at all.

He remembered sitting with them on the hill overlooking the village as the festival died down and people began going home. They’d been getting ready to leave for the Soltryce Academy in just a few weeks.

He remembered dropping Astrid off at her house and her parents yelling at him and Wulfie for keeping her out well past midnight. She’d of course come to their defense, and Caleb at the time didn’t understand what the big deal was. They were young and had magic and nothing could hurt them, right?

He remembered stopping on the side of the dirt road on the way to Wulfie’s house and sitting with him under the spidery blue-black shadows of a hollow thunderstruck oak. It was the first time he’d told anyone that he was pretty sure he liked boys and girls just the same. Wulfie had considered that for a moment before offering to kiss Caleb “just to see if he liked it.” Caleb could still recall the floaty brightness in his chest as their lips had met, and the heavy sinking as Wulfie had pulled away and decided that no, he didn’t like boys like that.

“You with me, Caleb?” Molly’s soft voice floated into the memory, and a tug on his hand brought him back to the present.

“ _ Ja, ja, _ I’m here,” Caleb mumbled. 

They’d emerged onto a wide plaza near the middle of town, centered around a large grassy expanse. People were laughing and dancing and buying silk flowers in the streets that crisscrossed the plaza, while many others sat or lay in the grass and stared up at the starry sky. 

Molly pulled Caleb into the grass and down onto their backs. They lay side by side, maybe a foot apart, though still connected by their held hands.

“So what do we know about this festival?” Molly asked. He’d hooked his flower crown around one of his horns and it had fallen off when he’d lain down.

“I don’t know any more than you,” Caleb replied. “I guess we’ll find out eventually.”

They lay in companionable silence for a few more minutes, watching the stars above and the people around them.

Then, without warning, the sky cracked open with a deafening  _ boom _ . 

Caleb cringed away as multicolored sparks tumbled towards the ground in the wake of the explosion. He prepared himself to run or to fight as needed, but the rest of the crowd was already cheering.

Now that he was fully attentive, Caleb noticed a shape streaking through the night, leaving a trail of smoke in its wake, until it exploded into another shower of colorful sparks.

The crowd oooh-ed and aaah-ed as more of these explosions lit up the sky. Caleb couldn’t help but see his home every time he closed his eyes— the roof caving in, and the sparks it sent up to mingle with the stars. 

Molly must have sensed his discomfort, because he ran his thumb over the back of Caleb’s hand and said, “How’re you doing? We can go inside if it’s too much.”

Caleb shook his head. He needed to see this. It was truly a beautiful sight, and he wanted this memory etched into his mind, so that next time he saw dancing sparks he’d think of lying under the springtime sky, hand in hand with Mollymauk. 

Soon Molly scooted closer to Caleb and rested his head on his chest. He had to be careful of his horns, but he managed to find an angle that was comfortable for both of them. Without thinking, Caleb brought his hand up and toyed with the short, soft curls at the base of Molly’s neck. Molly nestled into the touch like Frumpkin getting his head scratched.

They lay under the rainbow explosions while Molly stared up in wide-eyed wonder, and Caleb stared down at Molly. 

There was a shifting in the grass behind them, and they turned to see Yasha and Nott sitting down. 

Nott’s eyes were even wider than Molly’s as she watched the sky and gasped, “What are those things, and how do I get some?”

Molly chuckled and sat up. Caleb regretted the loss of his warmth, but he couldn’t help a smile at Nott’s reaction.

“I got you presents!” Molly exclaimed, handing off the two spare crowns to Nott and Yasha. Yasha smiled fondly down at hers and thanked him before placing it gently atop the braids and tangles of her black and gray hair. Nott took a big bite of the berries on hers before spitting them out with a hiss as she realized they were made of wax. Caleb took the crown from her and placed it gently on her head, between her big ears.

He was overcome by an unexpected wave of affection for this ragtag group of wanderers as he watched them take in the fireworks and talk among themselves. Yasha was identifying the flowers on Nott’s crown and telling her which ones were edible or poisonous, at least in their non-silk versions. 

“This one makes a really nice tea,” she explained, pointing to a small white and yellow bloom. “It’s very calming, and good with honey.”

Nott scowled and took a swig from her hip flask.

Caleb tried to watch the sky as much as he could, and when the explosions and noise became too much, he’d turn away and watch his friends instead. 

 

———————

 

Caleb seemed happy, or at least as happy as he ever was, and that in turn made Molly happy. The man had been grim from the moment they’d met, and the collapse of his whole life over the past six weeks had only made things exponentially worse. It was good to see him smile and laugh, even if the moments were fleeting. And the fact that Caleb could even look at the explosions after what he’d seen in his memories gave Molly hope that maybe, with enough time, he could heal from this. 

It was late into the night by the time the group headed back to the inn. Molly had tried to talk them into joining some of the other festivities of the night, the dancing and the drinking games and the street performers, but they’d all been too eager to get to a comfortable bed for once. Molly normally would have argued harder to keep the party going, but returning to the inn meant sharing a bed with Caleb, and he had a fancy pot of oil that had been taunting him from his coat pocket all night. 

Molly collapsed onto their bed while Caleb did his arcane alarm around the door, and he decided that “their bed” was his new favorite phrase in the whole world.

They both removed their coats and boots in silence, until Molly placed the white and blue ceramic pot on the bedside table. 

Caleb’s eyes flicked to it, and they were almost the same color as its painted flowers. He perched on the edge of the bed and looked down at Molly. 

“You still want to do this, Mollymauk?” he asked. His voice was low and rough and it went straight to Molly’s hips. 

“Yeah, I’ve been thinking about it all night,” Molly laughed, rolling closer to Caleb on top of the sheets.

Caleb met his eyes briefly before glancing away. “Last time we… were together. It was in the woods, we were on edge and stressed out and we did… what we did to relieve some of that. But tonight was a good night. So why do you still want to do this?”

Molly wasn’t sure what to make of that response. “Caleb, if you’re not in the mood, we don’t have to do anything. But I want you to fuck me because sex is fun and you have a nice dick. So if you’re worried about my interest, there’s nothing to worry about.”

Caleb stayed perched on the bedside and considered his words. Then he must have made up his mind, since he leaned down and kissed the corner of Molly’s lips.

The next moment, they were tangled together on the bed, a mess of grasping hands and clumsy legs trying to slot together enough to grind down against.

Even in their frantic tangle, Caleb’s hands were steady and focused as they slipped Molly’s shirt off and unlaced his tight trousers.

Molly relaxed into his roving hands and wished he hadn’t left his nipple rings behind in Rexxentrum as Caleb’s fingers brushed down his chest. Caleb seemed a bit reticent about kissing Molly full on the lips again, but his mouth explored and marked his neck and chest with abandon.

Caleb let out a gasp as Molly’s hand slid between their bodies and pumped at his cock. He hadn’t been lying earlier about thinking Caleb’s dick was pretty; it was flushed adorably and a good size, big enough that it would stretch him nicely but not so huge as to be unwieldy. He wanted it inside him soon— it had been months since he’d been fucked, and he was getting desperate.

He began sharing these desires with Caleb, through barely-coherent gasps of “need you” and “fuck me” and frantic scrambling for his pot of oil.

Caleb lifted himself up on his elbows above Molly. “You’re sure?”

Molly surged forward and kissed Caleb hard on the lips. “Yes, Caleb Widogast,” he murmured. “For the thousandth time, I want you. I want you because you’re brilliant and beautiful and kinder than you let yourself believe, and you deserve to feel good.”

Caleb’s lips barely brushed Molly’s as he said, “How altruistic of you.”

Molly smiled at him through the not-quite-kiss. “Hey, I’m all about generosity. And if I cum from it too, well, that’s just an added bonus.”

One of Caleb’s hands ran down Molly’s thigh. “I don’t deserve this,” he muttered, his brow furrowing. "This, or you, or..."

“Where’s all this coming from?” Molly asked, cradling Caleb’s cheek in his hand. “I thought you said you wanted this?”

“I do, so much,  _ ja _ ,” Caleb said, “but I’m a selfish man who wants many selfish things.”

“Just because something feels good or is fun doesn’t mean it’s selfish or bad,” Molly said. “You’re allowed to want things even if they’re not useful in some grand scheme.”

Finally, Caleb kissed his lips, full and hard and messy. “I do want you, Mollymauk, even if I shouldn’t.”

“You’re so melodramatic,” Molly teased. “Besides, I’m very desirable. You should want me. I  _ want _ you to.”

Caleb fumbled the lid off the oil and suddenly Molly had a slicked finger circling his entrance.

“Now we’re getting somewhere,” Molly giggled.

Caleb rested his forehead against Molly’s as he slipped the first finger into him.

Molly sighed and kissed the tip of Caleb’s sun-freckled nose. Caleb began working him open just as slowly and methodically as he would have expected. It was nice, finally having something inside him after so long on the road. Caleb’s fingers were confident in their motions, as if he were tracing the runes of a familiar spell.

With two fingers comfortably inside Molly, Caleb murmured, “I don’t know much about tiefling anatomy. Do you—”

But the cry of pleasure that Molly let out as he crooked his fingers forward was all the confirmation he needed. Molly grabbed onto his shoulders and clung tightly to him, grinding down on his fingers as he begged for “more, please, I need more, Caleb.”

He hadn’t expected it to be this good. In fact, he couldn’t really place why he was enjoying this so much more than he’d anticipated. Maybe it was because he’d had such a long dry spell before this. Maybe it was because his expectations of the soft-spoken, nervous wizard had been a bit low.

Maybe it was because it was  _ Caleb _ inside him. 

But the now three fingers inside him were hindering his ability to properly analyze his feelings, so he did what Mollymauk Tealeaf did best and just gave himself over to the carnal pleasure of the moment.

 

———————

 

Caleb could scarcely believe that this was happening. Not that he was sleeping with Mollymauk; he got the impression that that wasn’t a very exclusive club. But more so that Molly seemed to be genuinely enjoying every moment of it, responding to every touch as a stream of gasps and moans and curses fell from his plump lips.

“ _ Bist du bereit _ ?” Caleb asked as Molly ground onto his hand. 

Molly stared up at him with a curious frown until he realized he’d asked in Zemnian, then repeated in Common, “Are you ready?” 

“Ah, right,” Molly laughed. “In that case, fuck yes.”

Caleb had to stop himself from leaning down to kiss Molly. That was too much for this moment, too intimate. He already kept forgetting that this was just a casual fuck with his platonic friend.

At Molly’s bidding, he rolled his hips forward into the tiefling’s waiting warmth. Molly immediately tightened his legs around Caleb’s waist, beckoning him in deeper.

Caleb buried his face in the crook of Molly’s neck as he began fucking him in earnest, slow at first but building as Molly responded beautifully to his every motion. They didn’t speak much beyond the occasional murmur of “yes” or “harder” or a tangle of curses in Common, Zemnian, and echoing Infernal, but more words weren’t needed. 

 

\-----------------

 

Lying under Caleb, with the wizard buried deep inside him, Molly knew he was lost. He didn’t want this moment to end, yet on at the same time, he wanted to bring Caleb to his finish, to watch his face in that split second when the whole world went quiet and whatever nightmares plagued him faded away. He wanted to make Caleb feel so good that he forgot he’d ever hurt, even if just for a moment. He wanted to give him the peace he deserved, and this was the only way Molly knew how.

He held Caleb close with one arm wrapped around his shoulders while the other held the back of his head, stroking the soft auburn hair that was growing long and unkempt on the road.

“Molly,” Caleb gasped, and the tiefling could feel the gentle exhale of breath against his tattooed neck. “Molly, I’m close.”

Molly kissed the top of his head and tightened the grip of his legs. True to his word, Caleb finished moments later, crying out and filling Molly before flopping down on top of him with his full weight. Molly ground lazily against the soft seam of his hip and thigh, finishing not long after with a soft growl that rumbled his chest like the purring of a cat.

He kept stroking Caleb’s hair as they lay entangled with each other. A shaking movement ran through Caleb and for a panicked moment Molly thought he was sobbing against his neck, until he realized it was laughter.

Molly couldn’t help chuckling along. “What’s so funny?” he asked, grinning so wide his fangs poked his bottom lip.

Caleb propped himself back up on his elbows and looked down at Molly. “It’s all just so absurd,” he explained. “This bizarre town, our little group, our stupid plan, us having sex. If the day we met, someone told me all this would happen, I would have called them crazy. But here we are.”

“Yeah. Here we are,” Molly sighed, pushing a strand of hair behind Caleb’s ear.

Caleb kissed the tip of his nose before getting up to wipe Molly up with a rag. He waved a hand to dampen it before cleaning the cooling spend from Molly’s stomach and thighs. Then he curled up next to Molly and pulled the sheets over them both.

Molly cuddled close to him and was soon asleep, tired from a long day and good night, and lulled softly by the gentle beating of Caleb’s heart.

**Author's Note:**

> You can find me at trashabellanar.tumblr.com too!


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